Tic Tok
by animegus farmus
Summary: Elmer Gulch's life probably didn't need to be quite so difficult, thing was, it made Hank and Emily's job so much easier. A companion piece to Tales from the Otherside.
1. Hero

_Disclaimer: If I could claim Tin Man, don't you think I would?_

_Author's Note: So about the time I was finishing up 'Tales from the Otherside' I was feeling a bit mournful that I had certain other little DG/young Gulch ideas in mind and now nowhere to put them, this thought collided with the idea that it was a shame that despite talking about Emily and Gulch's first meeting, we never got to see it. The resultant train wreck of thought about dumped me into the sink full of dishes I was doing at the time, I was giggling so hard. I really hope that I have managed to convert the live action film my imagination produced into words sufficiently to share it with you. Rules are the same as for TFTO, just Hank and Emily probably aren't going to switch narration quite so evenly. Hope you enjoy._

* * *

...

Emily, nurture unit and cyborg, wasn't entirely sure she and her fellow tic tok Hank were going to be able to perform their one duty in this world of raising the youngest princess of the O.Z. up right and keeping her safe. They'd almost lost the child twice already and that was _before_ they'd even gone through the travel storm. The girl just couldn't seem to help but try to wander, even more so now that the Consort had crossed back over. The Mystic Man had worried there might be some side effects from the cloaking of her memories, though it was hard to say if that was the real issue: DG's tendency to explore had, after all, been what had gotten them all in this mess in the first place. Seemed a bit harsh to blame a five year old, however, her mothering programming told her as she glanced out the window to check on the princess, but the sad fact remained that...she didn't have a clue where DG might be, because she most certainly was _not_ in the yard.

"Haaaaaank!" the already much tried Emily hollered as she scampered towards the door, "Lord have mercy," she added with careful use of Otherside idioms, "we've lost her again!"

This was beginning to be something of a routine; they'd only been in the Otherside for three days and Hank had spent most of that time chasing DG across the farm – heaven knows what they'd do if the princess ever made it past the property line. Emily was beginning to doubt they were cut out for this: nurture units were not guards, and a guard was what the princes undoubtedly needed.

Fretting about the house – lest by some miracle the child decided to return on her own – while Hank went out to scour the countryside for the truant, the cyborg wished for what her central processor informed her was the one hundredth and twenty-sixth time that the Consort had seen fit to send a member of the princess' protection detail with them. Unfortunately, the Otherside native had been opposed to the idea – with no time to train anyone, the cyborgs were the only ones that had any hope of fitting into this alien society. And so it was that the Queen had come to Milltown, seeking the most advanced tic toks – those with the ability to give the appearance of aging – with Ahamo's carefully – if hastily – prepared Otherside Orientation Program and the little girl that was now the O.Z.'s one hope. And it fell to Hank and Emily to keep her alive. As the hours ticked by and still there was no sign of Hank or the princess, the counterfeit farmwife came to the conclusion that they needed more than a guard, they needed a hero, they needed...

_Knock, knock, knock._

"Afternoon, ma'am," the unknown young man standing on her doorstep said politely as he tipped a hat vaguely like those some tin men liked to wear at her, "my name's Officer Gulch, you wouldn't happened to have lost anything lately would you?"

"Wha...DG!" she cried diving forward to snatch up the five year old that had been trailing in stranger's wake, "Are you alright? Where have you been?" the mother unit demanded anxiously, checking carefully for damages – humans were so fragile, children especially, "Do you have any idea how worried I was? Don't you ever do that to me again young lady," she ordered at last, "How did you find her?" she added, holding tightly onto the princess and glancing up at the man who'd identified himself as Officer Gulch.

"Just happened to be driving by, ma'am," he replied humbly, "saw her in Spencer's bullpen trying to ride old Hanni-, er, Farmer Spencer's old bull."

Emily closed her eyes in pure horror, she should have known that trouble would come of the Consort's farewell outing with his youngest daughter; she was so munchkin see, munchkin do. To take her to a place where they rode the livestock just to see whether you can keep from being bucked off...the tic tok shuddered. "Are you sure you're okay?" the surrogate mother asked frantically, the princess was being so uncharacteristically quiet – though that might have something to do with the fact that the cyborg was squeezing the breath out of her.

"She's fine," Officer Gulch told her, just a touch dryly, "Hasn't got a scratch on her in fact."

Glancing up at the princess' saviour, Emily had a millisecond of synaptic panic as she realized that a response of gratitude was required here and she hadn't had enough time in the Otherside to the assimilate Ahamo's data packet for integration with observation of the natives in order to select the correct one. So she chose all of them.

"Gah!" the Othersider exclaimed in surprise and embarrassment as Emily leapt up and wrapped herself around him.

"_Thank you_," she breathed earnestly, pulling back so that she could place a kiss on either blushing cheek, "for saving her," she uttered sincerely, grasping one of his hands with her own and kissing it as well, "if anything had happened to her all would have been lost," she stated dramatically, clasping the captured hand to her breast.

Eyes bugging comically, the young man choked, "N-no really, m-ma'am, j-just d-doing my d-duty."

"Regardless I..._you're bleeding_," Emily gasped as she only this instant noticed the makeshift bandage tied awkwardly around his hips.

"He got whored," DG piped up for the first time, watching them with interest.

"Gored," the Othersider corrected reflexively, "And it's no-"

"Let me look at that..."

Officer Gulch about hit the ceiling when Emily grabbed his belt and tugged. "No really, ma'am," he yelped, trying to knock her hands away, "it's nothing. They can take care of it at the hote-_hospital_," he amended hastily, "at the _hospital_. I just messed with the bull and got a little of the horn is all," he said desperately, still striving to get her to release his pants.

"You were willing to put yourself in harm's way for her," she exclaimed tremulously, throwing herself at him yet again and, ignoring his alarm widened eyes and flailing hands, pressed her lips firmly to his. Cross referencing her kissing protocols with her gratitude responses while trying to take into consideration the human need to breath, Emily tried to calculate the correct length and depth that was required to properly thank the princess' rescuer. She figured about the time she hit his tonsils that she must have got it about right.

Releasing the young man, the cyborg averred strenuously, "I don't know how we can ever thank you enough."

Stumbling back a few steps, Officer Gulch panted for breath before mumbling faintly, "No, really...not problem...anytime. Gotta...gotta go now," he muttered distractedly as he tripped down the steps.

"What a nice young man," Emily stated, deciding that was a suitable comment after a quick consult with her CPU.

"Says he's cop but gots the wrong badge," the princess informed her dubiously.

"Is he now?" she replied with interest. Watching the young man wobble his way back to the foreign vehicle plainly marked 'to serve and protect', Emily reflected that if tic toks had prayers, hers had just been answered.


	2. Logic

_Disclaimer: Believe you me, you do not want to make an issue of my not owning this, I am not in the mood for peaceful confrontations. Less than peaceful ones, however, can be considered..._

_Author's Note: So my entire class has come down with collective insomnia due to our new semester schedule, we're taking turns sleeping in class, my work/school/volunteering schedule this week is only promising to make it worse, and last night I almost choked on my toothbrush when a random thought brought a partially formed idea for the Gulch family crest to my mind (it was the handcuffs what done it). All my not so inner five year old can say is: thank goodness we have cyborgs to play with!_

* * *

...

Hank couldn't have been more honoured than when he and Emily had been chosen as the youngest princess' guardian nurture units. There could be no more important task in all the O.Z. or the Otherside than seeing to it that DG grew up into a responsible, caring, and hard-working member of the royal family, who would return to the O.Z. to banish the witch possessing her sister and restore light to the Realm. He had no real doubts regarding the success of this vital assignment, he had, after all, been partnered with the best mother unit it had ever been his privilege to interface with. He and Emily had been through programming together, and not only was she the prettiest cyborg ever wired, her CPU was top rate. Just look at how well and how fast she'd acclimatized to the Otherside in the scant year that they'd been there...

...okay, so there had been that one little malfunction during that incident with Officer Gulch and the bull, but to be fair to Emily, she hadn't had any real preparation time to develop the necessary operating procedures. Further study of the inhabitants of the small town they now called home had indicated that the female cyborg's response had been excessive, but Hank would be the first to admit that if it had been him in that scenario, he would have kissed the policeman, too.

It had been a bit of a dilemma when they'd realized Emily's mistake. On one grasping device, they needed to simulate the normal behaviours of their human Otherside neighbours, and on the other, the mother unit had set a precedent in terms of her operating procedures when in the grips of a gratitude reaction. To do differently, should the occasion arise again – and they both projected that it would – may appear odd and upload suspicion. In the end, they'd decided that decreasing the magnitude of the reaction would be an acceptable solution, at least where Officer Gulch was concerned. The enthusiastic hug with occasional cheek kisses and just the barest minimum of hand grasping seemed to work, they tended to make the cop go bright red and played all havoc with his pheromones, but he gave no indication he suspected the tic toks of being other than what they appeared. The nurture units had been prepared to treat any other rescuer with the perceived normal response and hope the discrepancy was not noted, fortunately, as it turned out, the young officer had ended being the one that brought DG home the most anyhow.

This was not, entirely, a coincidence.

Emily had been the one to generate the idea of unofficially recruiting the unwitting Officer Gulch into the princess' protection detail. Those first few days on the Otherside had been particularly difficult, between assimilating into their new environment and trying to keep track of the rambunctious princess. While Hank's programming left him to be optimistic about the future and confident in their abilities, Emily's left her a bit of a worrier, she'd been almost humanly frantic as to what to do about DG. The cop's arrival that day had seemed to her a gift from some human deity, and so she'd set out to discover how she might bring the police officer into their service.

It hadn't actually been that hard. Not only was the young man a member of the local equivalent of the Central City tin men, but he seemed to have an instinctive need to protect and he lived, in terms of country distances, practically next door. While his concern for DG was merely a part of his universal protectiveness of children, neither nurture unit saw this as being a glitch in Emily's future plans, the only problem was...

"Hank, I don't know how many times I have to tell you this, and I would greatly appreciate your passing the message along to Emily, but the police station is _not_ a daycare center," the man Officer Gulch often referred to as The Chief, growled through the receiver.

...that the local law enforcement didn't take well to the co-opting of its members.

"Officer Gulch said that it is the duty of the police force to serve and protect the citizens of their jurisdiction," the cyborg pointed out, not for the first time. They'd had this rather circuitous argument before; Hank had to wonder if the sheriff's memory chips were faulty if he couldn't seem to remember this.

"I realize that it is our purpose to safeguard the people of the community," the police chief huffed in exasperation, "but that doesn't mean...oh hold on a second," he growled politely. The tic tok's enhanced hearing registered the sound of the phone being put down – actually a human probably could have picked up that – followed by the sound of an opening door and what was undoubtedly DG's giggling. "Elmer!" the chief snapped in the distance, "Could you _please_ pick up line one and explain to Hank that cop doesn't mean baby...sit...ter," there was a moment's silence then, "Is that what I think it is?" the sheriff asked incredulously.

"If you think it is a horse halter, then yes," the voice of Officer Gulch replied absently.

On the other side of the line, Hank decided to rerun his argument protocols. Emily had been very clear in dictating her logic algorithm as for why the addition of a native of the realm would augment their protective capacities, even if the human himself could not be informed. The Consort's intelligence on Otherside custom was well over ten annuals out of date, which, as the nurture units understood, was a long time for the changeable species. The mother unit had been adamant that they needed someone cognisant of the local dangers, as well as someone able to move freely where their own roles restricted. Hank had to agree, from his observation of the local population, that the human offspring spent increasingly less time with their progenitors as they grew older, for Hank and Emily to always cling to the princess' side or show up constantly would look exceedingly strange, thus the need for additional units that could be counted on to safeguard the princess in their stead.

"Why is she wearing a horse halter?" the older human queried to the background of Hank's processing.

"It fit," the young cop answered.

The cyborg selected the blink response as he ran this exchange through his central processor and cross-matched the item with known articles of clothing. The mother unit had carefully reviewed all of the available lawmen once their existence had come to their notice and had come to the conclusion that Officer Gulch was the best candidate for their purpose: he was able, he was available, his general location was beneficial, he was instinctively motivated...

"And _why_ is there a six year old girl suspended from my station ceiling?" the chief demanded over another batch of giggles.

"I needed to get some work done," was matter of fact response.

...his decision making was every bit as incomprehensible as the little princess'...

Hank was always ready to acknowledge the superiority of Emily's CPU, but every so often he wondered whether her logic generator might be faulty.


	3. Bonding

_Disclaimer: a-e-i-o-u and sometimes y can't I claim this? Oh right, don't own it._

_Author's Note: How is it that I went so long with cyborgs on hand and yet did nothing with them? Oh right, I was distracted by Cain, then by Gulch, then by Azkadellia, then by little DG and young Gulch, and then by...oh right, not telling. Anyhoo, am remedying this now. Quality Control thinks Emily is more fun than Hank, she might be right. Alas you must suffer through another Hank chapter before we get back to the mother unit._

_PS For a somewhat unrelated story, what other countries exist in the same dimension with Oz? In some preliminary searching I think I read somewhere that there were others, I just don't have time to locate and read all of the Oz books to find out. Anybody know?_

* * *

...

* * *

Hank didn't understand Otherside technology, it was so tantalizingly like the machinery of the O.Z., and yet so inexplicably different. Of course, if you were to ask Emily, she'd say that the father unit didn't know any more about their Realm's technology than a munchkin could speak sense, either. Hank liked to select the scoff response to this; the nurture units had been programmed with so-called traditional gender roles, so what did the mother unit know about engines and...doohickies anyhow? Not anything that would help him fix his tractor you could bet your ruby slip-...er, bet your buttocks? The cyborg also couldn't comprehend most Otherside expressions but he had to program himself to use them even when processing lest he omit to cull the O.Z. jargon from his speech and confuse the locals. Hank selected the sigh reaction. None of this was aiding the reassembly of the parts of his tractor, especially when those parts kept inexplicably multiplying. This was _supposed_ to be no harder than changing a tire, and while the tic tok hadn't found that particular task to be as easy as advertised, this was certainly proving to be more complicated. He wondered if that was Officer Gulch's cruiser he heard turning off the highway...

The cyborg wiped his hands carefully on one of the few remaining clean rags and crawled out from between the tractor tires. By the time he reached the door of the shop the arriving vehicle had come to a stop, its doors opening and slamming closed again two very different sets of footsteps scuffed against the gravel.

"Momster!" DG called as her feet pattered up the porch steps, "Not 'sposed to send for Officer when not a wrong badge day! Momster?"

"DG!" Emily cried from somewhere in the house, "Oh, thank goodness you are okay." There was a brief pause as the mother unit undoubtedly checked for damages, then a distinct exclamation of 'Gah!' and the dull sound of two bodies colliding. "_Thank you, _Officer. Where did you find her?" the nurture unit demanded around the smacking sound of a kissed cheek and what seemed to resemble an incoherent protest.

"N-no really Emily..." the young policeman was stuttering while trying to pry the tic tok farmwife off of him as Hank rounded the corner of the house, "No big thing, she was just down the road in Farmer Spencer's chicken coup. No harm done, at least not to DG, Spencer's chickens on the other hand...And I know you were worried, but could you please not call me at home the next time she takes off? There are proper protocols that should be followed and reports of missing children should go through to the station, it's important," he insisted as he finally managed to dislodge the nurture unit.

"They'll send you anyhow," the seven year old commented, picking feathers out of her hair, "Chief man wants to live to see his grandkids an' Kenney can't catch me."

"I know they'll send me anyhow," the cop grumbled back, "Greg Kenney's attempt to collar you drove him into early retirement, but it'd be nice if _someone_ pretended we were following regulations."

"Meh," the little girl opined, "I'm hungry," she added, which just set the mother unit off again.

"Of _course_ you're hungry," Emily chided, shooing DG into the house, "running about goodness knows where doing lord only knows what..."

Hank watched as the princess disappeared inside, followed immediately by the fussing tic tok, and generated a thought on the wake of the policeman's sigh of relief. The cyborg deemed it advantageous to use the opportunity presented. "Officer Gulch, I hate to bother you," he said, selecting supplication format alpha, "but..."

The cop froze in the midst of turning towards the steps.

"...I'm having a little trouble with my tractor..."

Officer Gulch looked longingly at the fishing rod Hank could just identify, tucked into the back of the truck cab.

"...and I would really appreciate the help, if you have the time."

The policeman hesitated.

Noticing this, the cyborg hastily added, "Don't trouble yourself none, I'm sure if I tinker around a bit more I can-"

"Where is it?" the neighbourly cop cut in.

"Are you sure you can spare the time?" Hank with what his CPU determined was the correct amount of polite demur.

"I'm pretty sure I can't afford not to," Officer Gulch muttered at what should have been below audible levels – if the cyborg were human, "I remember what you did to your truck."

"Well if you're sure..." the tic tok murmured gratefully, leading the way.

Five minutes later he was watching the policeman's reaction as he stared at the mess that currently constituted Hank's tractor. "What were you trying to _do?_" the young man asked in utter bafflement.

"Change the oil," the cyborg explained, he'd have thought it was obvious.

"So you took apart the tractor?" the cop queried blankly.

"Aren't you supposed to?" Hank questioned in surprise. How else were you supposed to get all the old oil out?

The Othersider's faint croak of 'no' indicated not. The policeman blinked. "Go...go get me a...the manual, yeah, the manual," he said at last.

"Think that will help?"

"...Probably."

"On it, be right back."

"Take your time," the cop answered absently, "In fact it would likely help a great deal in future if you read it first," he muttered as the cyborg slipped out of the shop, "Right, how'm I gonna handle this?" he apparently added to the workshop at large.

Hank kept his augmented hearing trained on the machine shed as he searched for the required manual – Ahamo had been the one to find the farmhouse, and it had contained many items that the nurture units had yet been able to spare the attention to catalogue, he had no idea where this manual might be – he did hope to be able to piece together some of what the policeman did from the sounds. Unfortunately, he couldn't fathom what a blowtorch might be needed for just from the sound of it being lit.

"DG, take these sandwiches out to Officer Gulch would you?" he heard Emily say from the kitchen, "The poor man must be working up an appetite out there."

"Brought food," the princess announced in the distance some short minutes later, "Can I help?"

"Sure," the cop replied, "you can play gofer. Mind finding me a rag so that I can eat these sandwiches without devouring half an axle worth of grease at the same time?"

"Can do," the seven year old chirped happily. A few moments passed. "What's this?" she wondered.

"What's what?" the policeman hummed idly, his attention apparently elsewhere.

"This thingy," DG elucidated to the sound of clumsy fingers fiddling with a knob, "To light, turn knob counter clockwise...ooh, I know these things; they make sparks..."

"DG, _what...?"_ Officer Gulch began sharply, only to be cut off by the sound of fwoosh.

Much yelling, clattering, thumping, banging, splashing and other sounds of chaos followed.

Both nurture units were sprinting out the door before their CPUs had begun sorting out the various noises and compiling a sequence of events. A Princess in Danger Alert had gone off, which left them no option but to run to her aid. The policeman was cursing – or at least that's what their word root identifying program said he was doing – as he used his jacket to beat out the flames of the small fire on the machine shop floor. DG was spluttering her way to the surface of the nearby water barrel, her hands as they clutched the edge showing an alarming redness. Fairly similar to the patches of redness on the back of the cop's neck and shoulder, Hank noticed as the young man succeeded in putting out the flames, and his hair seemed to be a bit singed.

"You," the Othersider growled at the princess as he caught his breath, "are not coming near a garage with me in it unless we establish some ground rules first."

"I'm sorry," the bedraggled seven year old said remorsefully, "I'm sorry, I'll fix it, I'll fix hair."

"Hair?" the cop hissed, his hand reaching up to discover the large patch of ragged ended, wildly uneven burnt hair.

"It was getting too long anyhow," Emily tutted in what her CPU deemed was the appropriate response.

"Right," Officer Gulch stated flatly, "I'll be going then. Hank you might want to call Eddie about that tractor..."

"No!" DG wailed after him, "I'll fix, I'll fix it!"

"Allow her a chance to make amends," the father unit interjected, reaching out a hand to stall the cop. He only had the preliminary search results to go on, but he was pretty sure social grooming was part of bonding between individuals, which could be useful in terms of Emily's plans regarding the young Othersider.

Whether the policeman actually heard him or not was in doubt; he was currently standing stock still, having been captured by an unwary glance back at watery, pleading blue eyes. Potent orbs those eyes; of this the tic tok was well aware. He had recorded many occasions upon which those eyes had made him function counter to safety programming, he had yet to diagnose why.

The little princess shivered; Officer Gulch let out a strangled exclamation of some emotion Hank couldn't identify and stomped back to the girl. "Fine!" he huffed, hauling her out of the rain barrel, "Fine, you can try to fix it, but _after_ we get those burns taken care of."

DG crowed, instantly happy again. Her burns, in the end, turned out to be quite minor, so, fortunately, were the cop's. The tic tok known as Hank wasn't really knowledgeable about what the Othersiders considered to be appropriate haircuts, but he was much struck by the idea of bonding through grooming. Children, he calculated, ought to bond with their parents, too.

Officer Gulch went home with a new age haircut and nicked ear to go with his burns. He had the misfortune to run into Carter on the way, ensuring that everyone knew why the youngest cop on the local force had suddenly decided to sport a crew cut. The grill cook was quite descriptive as to the bizarreness of the 'do, but even he had to admit, the absurdity of the policeman's temporary look had nothing on DG's once Hank got through with her.


	4. Appropriated

_Disclaimer: Like the knee that tried to crush my sternum during tonight's hockey game, I do not own Tin Man. Ow._

_Author's Note: I have been horribly remiss, meant to mention last chapter that friendlyquark has been making my day with amusing drawings again. This time is a scene from 'Gone Fishin' in 'Otherside Encounter'. The link is on my profile. She also has an ink up of the dastardly duel, but I am hoping she'll colour it yet so I'm waiting to link it. Greedy of me, I know, I wonder where I learned that from? Eheheheheh._

* * *

...

* * *

Emily might, had she been human, have taken pride in the way her plan regarding the recruitment of Officer Gulch into DG's unofficial protection detail was coming into fruition. That the young police officer was one of the princess' most active defenders was an undeniable fact. Any of the local law enforcement, having had what they generally deemed the misfortune to come upon the little hellion in an act of mischief, would, it was true, do their level best – should the situation require immediate intervention, prohibiting their general practice of sending for their fellow cop – to deliver the child – or more often her playmates – from harm, but only Officer Gulch could be said to have gone above and beyond – far, far, _far_ beyond, according to the local townsfolk – the call of duty to keep her safe. It was the young cop that the nurture unit had selected as suitable who more often than not brought DG back from one of her adventures, who kept a wary eye out for her wherever he might be, who would tolerate her lighting his hair on fire the one day, only to pull her out of the river the next. Yes, Emily could very much be forgiven for taking credit for a well thought out plan, even had she been the humblest of women.

But she _wasn't_ a human woman, and her perfect chronographic memory had been carefully catalogued for events involving the little princess and the Kansas policeman, and the unequivocal conclusion from this analysis was that Officer Gulch had done most of the work all on his own. Undoubtedly, Emily had tweaked matters here and there, setting the cop on DG's trail when she'd gotten loose and Hank was either unavailable or unable to track her, but all too often the policeman would show up on their doorstep with the O.Z.'s one hope tucked under his arm before the nurture units had even realized she was missing. Like that time he'd pulled her out of some old well while her supposedly attentive tutors uselessly searched their place of learning for her, or, more recently, when he arrived in their yard with the eight year old clinging to his back like a monkey, having just – literally – fished her from the river; wherever the princess went, the Othersider seemed bound to find her.

The mathematical odds of this were not actually all that improbable, she'd calculated on more than one occasion. The Gulches' land actually shared a border with their most distant field, and the young cop was known to be a fairly active fellow. When not on what DG had once referred to as Wrong Badge Duty – the tic tok was a little uneasy that the princess could recognize that there was something unfamiliar about these Otherside badges, though that seemed to be fading – the policeman could often be found working his father's fields, or helping a neighbour, or running about for no purpose that the cyborg could devise. Given that the princess was even more active, it was a certainty that their paths should cross from time to time, especially since the mother unit had a working theory that Officer Gulch was actually altering his patterns subtly to intercept. Lately Emily had been generating the facsimile of hope that he was developing an emotional attachment to the young princess. The mother unit certainly looked upon the prospect with pleasure, her observations seemed to indicate this may be so, unrelated Othersiders didn't, as a general rule, tell others how to raise their offspring after all.

Not that the young man had actually tried to instruct the tic toks on the proper upbringing of the princess, he'd merely recommended new training regimes that might be put in place to enhance the probability of her survival. Just like any competent member of a protection detail should, really. And the nurture units had considered his advice, weighing its pros and cons, before implementing it, because why else have a protection detail if not to take the proper measures for the princess' safety?

The O.Z. programmed mother unit was a bit leery about this latest suggestion, though. She was aware that there were certain cultural differences between the Otherside and her native Realm, but she had always tabulated that there was sound logic behind keeping the gender most vital to the procreative process out of the water. Humans had a lamentable tendency to drown, just as the princess would have drowned if it wasn't for the cop...who had insisted she learn to swim so as to decrease her chances of drowning in the future. Coming full circle in her processing, the cyborg frown opted as she contemplated the human flaw to the policeman's chain of logic.

"Come on, DG," the young swimming instructor wheedled pleasantly, "just give it a try. I'll be right here, I promise."

"No!" the princess fired back, holding stubbornly onto the pool ladder lest she be pulled into the water, "Not going, can't breathe an' it gets dark an' scary."

"I won't let anything happen to you," the young woman tried again, "I'll hold on and won't let go."

"Not letting go," the eight year old insisted obstinately, tightening her grip on the rail.

Emily had told Officer Gulch this wouldn't do, that the girl was just too afraid of the water after her dip in the river. He'd seemed to think she'd get over it, the nurture unit didn't see how.

"Sir!" a new voice called out, "The open swimming isn't for another hour, we're in lessons right now..."

"Oh I know that," the Kansas cop replied cheerfully as he strode through the change room door, kicking off sandals and peeling off his t-shirt as he went, "I'm here to help out with a troublesome student. Hey there brat!" he added as he caught sight of the princess. Then, to the absolute horror of the tic tok, and the general shock of everyone else, he hefted the surprised DG off the ladder and hurled her into the water.

The mother unit gasped in alarm, was up and staggering two steps forward while her CPU tried to assimilate this new information, she'd never thought...never calculated...

Ignoring the amazed audience, Officer Gulch had already followed the child into the water and was reaching out to steady the splashing, sputtering, panicking girl. DG recognized salvation and, shrieking and spluttering still, scrambled frantically up the cop's upper body as far as she could go, kneeing him in the face in the process. She came to a rest with one leg crooked around the back of his neck, the other joining her arms in clinging desperately to his head.

"Feel better?" the policeman inquired dryly, his voice just a touch nasal from how the eight year old's shin was crammed up against his nose.

"You threw me into the water!" DG cried tremulously.

"Yep," he agreed, prying her off with some effort to resettle her more comfortably piggy back.

"You _threw_ me into the _water_!" she repeated with emphasis.

"Yep," he replied again unapologetically, "Hold your breath."

"What?"

"Hold your breath."

"Why?" the princess began before shrieking as her safety raft suddenly dove forward into the water. They resurfaced almost immediately, DG gasping and coughing as she spat water and howled, "You did that on purpose!"

"Told you to hold your breath," Officer Gulch informed her mildly, "might want to listen this time. Hold your breath," he added and dove.

The eight year old may be stubborn but she wasn't stupid, she'd sucked in a lungful of air before he'd even finished the sentence. They stayed under longer this time, as the adult male swam the width of the pool, and when they resurfaced even the cyborg, who was yet a long way from understanding human emotion, knew that something had changed.

"Again!" DG demanded jubilantly. So they went again, and then again, and then a fourth time, by which point the rest of the children in the princess' group were demanding turns. The water tutor's lessons were in complete shambles...not that she seemed to mind.

Nor did her peers, the female ones at least. Officer Gulch surfaced from one of his trips, two laughing kids on his back, absolutely surrounded by young, nubile _interested_ jailbait. The tic tok wondered what it was about this situation that induced fear in the young cop.

"You a relative of DG's?" the swimming instructor asked with a smile as she drifted closer.

"No, I, uh, no," the policeman stuttered in response, watching her warily. He should have been watching her friend.

"Where'd you get this scar?" she asked, her hand reaching out to indicate something Emily couldn't see.

Or to touch it. Officer Gulch about jumped a foot out of the water, quickly interposing one of the children between him and the young women as he backed hastily into the wall. Flushing crimson, he muttered, "I-it's nothing."

Clinging to his back, watching these events curiously, DG explained, "He got whored."

"Gored!"

"Do you know him?" a woman asked, interrupting Emily's observation of the scene.

The nurture unit turned to look at the woman, a young mother of one of the children here. A single young mother, the tic tok's perfect chronographic memory informed her, who was all too fascinated with the sole member of Princess DG's protection detail – and she wasn't the only one. It took Emily less than a nanosecond to comprehend the danger. A good part of the reason Officer Gulch was so available, so willing to be persuaded – however unknowingly – into being the princess' unofficial guard was that he was single, unattached and otherwise without distractions. A significant other would change things, a wife and children would alter his patterns completely, making him less likely to be out where DG was, reducing her back to just one of the neighbourhood offspring, who he would seek to protect if he was there, but would undoubtedly not be there so often. Glancing from the teenage humans to the young adult ones, calculating the policeman's age to be somewhere in the mid twenties, making him acceptable mating material for most of the reproductively mature females present, the threat to the youngest princess of the O.Z. these women represented was almost enough to freeze her central processor...

...but Emily's CPU was the latest, most advanced model yet produced in Milltown. It may have taken her almost a nanosecond to realize the problem, and a few more to analyze it, but she had plenty of time, in that handful of seconds between the single mother's question and the cyborg's answer she'd already synthesized a solution.

Human's liked to pass on information; it was a well documented fact.

"Yes," the synthetic farmwife responded as she sat back down in the chair she'd abandoned when their guard had thrown his charge into the water, "he's a police officer down at the local station where we live about half an hour from here."

"You know him well?" the woman pursued with a facade of idle curiosity.

"Mercy me, fairly well, I would say," the nurture unit agreed heartily, "DG gets herself into a great deal of trouble and he is forever bringing her back."

"He is good with children," the single mother mused, her eyes focused on where Officer Gulch was teaching the eight year old to float, seeing as she still refused to trust the teachers. The mother unit speculated briefly on how he'd manage to disperse the teenagers back to their duties. "Is he single?" the young woman demanded suddenly, interrupting the cyborg's processes.

Had Emily not been a machine of logic and thus far simulated emotion, she'd have said she could almost feel the intensity of the all the women's attention. As it was, she remained unaffected, and, with a quick crosscheck of all the data she'd gathered and been programmed with, she answered with carefully calculated hesitancy, "Well he's not married, but he's not unattached either."

"Girlfriend?" the woman asked, a little less eagerly.

The cyborg considered and discarded the alternative of leaving it there. A girlfriend, she had found, was all too often a temporary thing. Interested women, never seeing the policeman in the company of an obvious romantic attachment would conclude that the relationship had terminated and that the cop was once more assailable. This would not do. On the other hand, something like a wife or fiancé could not be fabricated as these sorts of things were generally known and thus were too easily disproved in casual conversation. She needed something else, so she borrowed from those daytime shows she liked to study as part of her assimilation of human culture. They were most odd, but then, so were people.

"He's very much in love with a girl," the O.Z. made denizen informed them, casting about in her database for some template to build on, could think of only one, "she's a distant relative of ours, pretty little thing, a girl with spirit, but she is still quite young and her father doesn't approve. Officer Gulch rarely talks about it; finds it painful I believe. I think he's trying to give her time, let her grow up a little so that she can know her own mind before he tries to woo her. I've never met her myself; just know of her through family, it was just a coincidence that we happened to move into the same town where the Gulches live."

"No, really?" one of the other mother's breathed, awed, every single woman present hanging onto the nurture unit's every word, "Could you...what is she like? Does she...does she like him, too?"

Emily had to hide her first ever spontaneous smile as she began to describe the Officer Gulch's supposed lady love, a girl with wise brown eyes, kind heart, determined nature, and flowing brown hair. Did she love the faithful policeman back? Well, it was hard to say. You know how it is with youth, so tangled up in their own minds and thoughts and emotions, at war with themselves and the world at times, but she thought that there was some hope. The cop was such a patient, persistent young man after all.

Officer Gulch never did figure out why the gathering of doting mothers looked at him with such dewy eyes as he hauled himself out of the pool, but being him, he just shrugged it off and, watching the eight year old girl now splashing merrily about in the water, told the nurture unit triumphantly that he thought their problem was solved.

Emily just smiled and agreed whole mechanical heartedly.


	5. Guard

_Disclaimer: I may not own Tin Man but The Gulch Verse is mine._

_Author's Note: I am resigning myself to the notion that I shall writing these stories either until my muse runs out of ideas or nightdrive23 tells me to stop – because if _nightdrive23_ says stop, I know I've gone too far (waaaaaay too far). Neither of these seem likely to be happening anytime soon. Sigh._

* * *

...

Hank had to admit that this Otherside bodyguard machination was turning out to have innumerable advantages. Officer Gulch had not only proven to be adept at guarding the little princess, as well as active in securing her future safety, but he also came equipped with two progenitors more than willing to mind the nurture units' 'Baby Girl'. This was a fortunate convergence of resources as it had become clear upon data collation that human adults were expected to have lives beyond the tending of their offspring, thus occasionally requiring alternate caretakers. The cyborg wasn't quite able to process this yet, but he had noticed his assumed profession did necessitate his travelling for the sake of the repair or replacement of the all too fragile Otherside technology. Good thing Milltown machinery was less much prone to terminal malfunction else the princess would be alone in this strange world by now.

Well maybe not alone, the Gulches would, by all calculations, be more than willing to take the child in. Humans had this strange habit of wishing for items they didn't have, despite the complete functionality of their current possessions. The young cop, after all, was an entirely serviceable progeny as far as the father unit could tell, yet Mrs. Gulch so obviously coveted the nine year old girl currently under the cyborgs' protection. Odder still was that this yearning could be managed without having a deleterious effect on the value she placed on her son. Indeed, as he understood from the conversation of the two women sitting at the kitchen table, the policeman need only do something to mitigate the apparent child void in order to be deemed absolutely satisfactory by his mother. At least for a little while. Humans, Hank decided, were unnecessarily complex.

Hearing a noise from down the corridor, the father unit broke off from his explanation to the elder Mr. Gulch of how a simple battery change has resulted in the need for a new tractor and glanced down the hall. Officer Gulch was shuffling down the hallway wearing a ratty t-shirt and shorts, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes with one hand and dragging the youngest princess of the O.Z. by the ankle with the other. DG seemed to think this was an acceptable form of transportation.

"Woul' shomebo'y like ta tell me why I woke up ta 'n imp bouncin' on muh chest?" the cop slurred sleepily as he crossed the kitchen floor and dumped the nine year old unceremoniously – and upside down – in the remaining chair.

"Nice of you to join us," his mother commented with pointed amusement.

The cop merely grunted as he surveyed the remains of the breakfast the cyborgs had interrupted upon their arrival. By Hank's estimates, there was still plenty enough sustenance to provide the grown human several meals. The young man inserted some bread into the toaster, grabbed a plate and sent DG scrambling as he plopped down into the same chair, almost sitting on her.

"My chair, Big Butt!" the princess informed him indignantly.

"I take your chair and squish you," Officer Gulch muttered back almost lucidly, pouring a glass of juice and stretching to retrieve his toast.

The father unit watched as the nine year old surveyed the situation. The cyborgs' task would be so much easier if they could understand her thought processes.

"My chair," DG declared, crawling up into the policeman's lap.

Hank thought it another example of the strangeness of humans that the young man should first automatically raise his arms out her way so that he was now spreading jam on the toasted bread at the level of his head, and then blink down at her as if unsure of how the girl had come to be there.

Then the cop glanced warily at his mother and grumbled, "Don't get no ideas."

Mrs. Gulch, the nurture unit determined as he ran her expression through his emotion identifier/decoder, was looking at the two occupying the chair in front of her with a mixture of wistful, hopeful, happy and speculative amusement. It seemed to disturb her son a great deal.

DG started to eat his toast.

Officer Gulch huffed, either at his mother or the princess or both, put some more bread in to toast and reached for the frying pan of scrambled eggs. "Oie!" he protested as the nine year old took a big gulp of his juice.

The little princess merely smiled up at him with dancing, mischievous blue eyes.

Growling incomprehensibly, the cop dumped a large helping of eggs onto his plate and accepted the fresh glass from his smirking parent while the nine year old started in on his scrambled eggs.

"Am I going to be allowed to have any of my breakfast or are you going to eat it all?" the policeman groused, glaring at her owlishly.

"I'm a growing girl," she answered unrepentantly, "I need food."

"And I'm going to be a shrinking man at this rate," he rumbled back, "Tell you what, you can have that half of the plate, everything on this side is mine, and if you so much as _think_ of touching my bacon..."

"We should probably get going," Emily murmured, apparently pleased with the ongoing battle between the princess and her chosen guard – faulty logic generator, what could Hank say? – "We can't thank you enough for looking after her like this."

"Oh it's no trouble," Mr. Gulch assured them cheerfully, "Elmer will be doing all the work."

"Eh?" the policeman exclaimed in surprise, glancing up and losing a contested piece of bacon as a result.

"Now Elmer," his mother chided, "you know I have to go with your father to see the doctor today, you can keep an eye on her for a few hours."

"I'm supposed to be helping Spencer out today," he objected.

"So take her with you," Mama Gulch suggested reasonably, "you used to love riding around in the tractor with your father, she'll be fine."

"You sure you're alright with that?" the cop asked the nurture units desperately.

Hank glanced at Emily but was not surprised by the decision he scanned in her face: anything that resulted in direct supervision Officer Gulch was beneficial according to her program. "She'll enjoy that," the mother unit assured him.

"Really?" Officer Gulch mumbled, "I'm pretty sure I won't."

"Elmer!" his mother rebuked sharply.

"You will mind your manners young man," his father added sternly.

The nurture units bowed their way out, leaving the Gulches to their scolding. Truly odd creatures humans, the last thing Hank heard as he shut the door of his truck was the cop complaining that DG had once more devoured his breakfast foods. It was odd leaving the princess behind, the father unit always thought so. They were supposed to ensure her safety, which was not conducive to removing themselves from her vicinity. On the other grasping unit, Emily had pointed out, a large part of their task was to raise her up right, thus they needed to give her the opportunity to learn to function without parental supervision. Officer Gulch provided them with a safe way for them to do this. Besides, they really did need a new tractor; Hank's last set of repairs had rendered it what the cop referred to a DOA: Determined Owner Annihilated.

He had to acknowledge that there was a certain systems refresh to allowing the princess protection protocols to hibernate for a substantial time increment. They were even able to find what the dealer assured them was a good used tractor; it passed Hank's mechanical inspection at any rate. DG and Officer Gulch were asleep on the couch when the nurture units returned for the princess early that evening. The cop looked, as the Otherside expression went, dead to the world, laid out on his back, one bandaged arm wrapped around the nine year old using his chest for a bed, the other hanging over the edge of the cushions with the hand lightly clutching a warming icepack, presumably for the bruise forming on his shoulder. The princess didn't have a mark on her.

"Today," Mr. Gulch observed dryly as the two sets of parents surveyed the scene, "DG learned to do's and don'ts of farm safety, most particularly as it pertains to farm machinery."

"Is she alright?" Emily demanded anxiously, leaning over the girl.

"Oh she's fine," the cop's father commented in wry amusement, "just tuckered out from all of Elmer's near death experiences. Oh it wasn't as bad as all that," Papa Gulch huffed in exasperation as the mother unit looked truly alarmed, "mostly just a bunch of mini heart attacks, the kinds kids like to give their parents. Our only comfort," he added philosophically as he glanced at the pair, "is that someday they will have kids just like them to torture them just like they tortured us."

Working his way through this strange logic, Hank stepped forward to scoop up the princess, only to be startled right out of processing when, at the first hint of movement, the policeman's other arm shot up to lock into a tight band around the nine year old. The father unit looked at the sleeping cop in genuine surprise.

"Oh, ish you," Officer Gulch slurred, his eyes cracking open to stare at them blearily, "though' she 'scapin' 'gain. Take 'way," he uttered, his arms falling slack, allowing the cyborg to lift the child off of him. "Gonna shleep now, gonna sh-_ow!_" he cried as tried to roll onto his side only to rediscover some injury or other, "_mumblefudgingmo...fominnos ish!"_ the cop grumbled as he settled back into his original position. "Troubleshmakin'...where da kid go?" he queried fuzzily.

"I've got her," the father unit reminded him.

"Oh, goo', keep 'er outta th' machin'ry. Shtupid...movin'...partsh," the policeman trailed off incoherently and sank back into slumber.

"You know," Hank said to Emily later, as he tucked the young princess into bed and contemplated the unnecessary complexities of the human mind, "I have the notion we might need a guard to protect the princess' guard from the princess."


	6. Tie

_Disclaimer: I feel highly motivated to disclaim ownership on this one, I was fighting it every darned step of the way._

_Author's Note: Sorry for the delay but I was suffering from a tic tok block. Also from extremely cold weather that neither my windows nor my heater seemed to be doing much about, had to put up with hot chocolate sans marshmallows for two whole days before I rectified the situation (where is Gulch when you need him?). Have added a few more links to my profile: pics The Duel and Az's Guards by friendlyquark and a link to a TV tropes page that someone who seems to wish to remain anonymous made, though I think I figured out who (ahem: liar, liar, pants on fire). I feel there was something else I wanted to say but I can't remember what – suffering from chapter-take-forever-to-write-itis. I'm very nervous about this one, Quality Control was dubious and mind change-y, also she wants to arrest me for excessive cruelty to Officer Gulch. *shrug*_

* * *

...

* * *

Emily didn't understand the contradictions of human behaviour. It came, in part, with not thinking like them. The creators of Milltown were ever working towards patching this gap, interfacing regularly with various humans throughout the Realm in order to upgrade the emotion simulators and intuition approximation protocols so as to better emulate the software model. Unfortunately, at the time of the nurture unit's programming there'd still been a significant technological lag: the cyborg was still very much a construct of logic first and foremost; development of true emotion was a long and uncontrollable process. Thus it was that she had no framework of reference to comprehend how a human who had employed a great deal of his resources and sustained considerable personal injury in the pursuance of one goal should suddenly express rather emphatic wishes for the opposite result. There was no logical benefit in the reversal of effort, the cost already exacted being wasted in the act. Besides it would be terribly inconvenient to the mother unit's ultimate mission.

All had been calm as the cyborg had approached the local police station, just a normal day in the small town with DG in residence. A human might have had the intuition to say _too_ calm, because just as Emily entered the building the serenity was shattered by a strangled yell, followed by a great deal of thumping and banging, frantic cursing and a breathless stream of ungrammatical, phonetically incorrect, structurally un-functional words. Above it all was the sound of a whining keen that was increasing in pitch even as the unconventional dialogue faded into choked gasps, then it cut out abruptly as the now hurrying nurture unit dashed through the doorway of the main room. The humans within made for an odd scene: Officer Gulch was slumped over on the ground, caught between his desperate struggle with some piece of office machinery and his apparent desire to drag himself across the floor and strangle the ten year old standing in the corner; DG was holding the distal end of a power cord and staring at the cop in wide-eyed alarm while the chief helped fend off the machine's attack on his subordinate; and off to the other side of the room, Nancy the dispatcher calmly rifled through her desk with one hand while informing all units that assistance was not needed, officer DGed had been averted. Peaceful quiet resumed, just a normal day in small town with DG in residence.

"Gonna kill her, gonna _kill_ her," the princess' Otherside bodyguard hissed through constricted airways, one hand trying to drag himself and the attached equipment in the princess' direction as the other tugged at the cloth encircling his neck.

"Someday," the chief informed him prosaically, carefully inserting the scissors Nancy'd handed him beneath the tie currently strangling the younger cop, "you are going to look back on this day and laugh."

"When that day comes," Officer Gulch wheezed in response, "I will be sporting a fashionable restraining jacket, inhabiting a nice padded room for the criminally insane, and wondering why I didn't kill her sooner."

"Uh _hmm_," his boss hummed sceptically.

There was a sharp _snick_ and a rip of fabric and the beleaguered policeman rolled free, sucking in large gulps of air as he lay on the floor recuperating. DG took a hesitant step forward only to be frozen in place by the cop's gimlet glare.

"I am going to _strangle_ you," he informed her through gritted teeth.

Emily determined that this would be a good increment to indicate her presence. "DG!" she exclaimed, selecting the response appropriate to the most probable root cause, "Lord have mercy, what mischief have you been up to young lady?"

"I'm sorry," DG uttered morosely, still looking at the downed cop.

"Uh-_huh_," he grunted in perfect mimicry of the chief's sceptical tone as he hefted himself up on his elbows, "I'm sure you're..._let me see you hands_," he cut off sharply.

Alerted by the cop's tone, the nurture unit was alarmed to note that she'd failed to perceive that the princess' hands were bleeding. Setting off a full scale diagnostic to investigate this oversight, the cyborg hastened forward murmuring every comment on her concerned parent response list. Officer Gulch, however, was there before her.

"You just nicked 'em a little," he huffed after a careful inspection, "Get over here, let's get you sorted."

"Seriously Emily," the chief interjected in the weary voice a man who is constantly repeating himself and not expecting to be listened to this time either, "this has to stop, could you _please_ stop using the police station as your own personal daycare, we need to be able to move out at a moment's notice without having to worry about leaving a child unattended. It's against all rules and regulations and the stress you are putting on Officer Gulch...you're not listening are you?" he sighed in exasperation as the cyborg, deep in the midst of an error scan, was all too obviously focusing her remaining attention on where the cop was bandaging her ten year old charge's fingers.

"I'm sorry," DG mumbled again, "I didn't mean to, I just wanted..."

"...to test out if the new paper shredder could eat my tie," the policeman finished for her, "How were you supposed to know it would choke the life out of me? Could have happened to anyone. Your fingers all better? Good, _now_ I can strangle you." He didn't, though, much to the cyborg's relief, merely gave the child a stern lecture before instructing the mother unit to take the girl home and not bring her back. The princess was almost in tears over this announcement, causing the cop to add gruffly, "The chief's right, the station is no place for a kid to be running around, it's not safe."

"I never thought I'd see the day where you'd finally put your foot down," the chief muttered in awe as Emily herded the princess out the door. Whatever Officer Gulch's reply was, it was lost in the loud clattering as the young cop noisily set the office to rights, but there was a pause before the older policeman spoke again. "If you're that worried about her, why don't you get your mother to babysit?" he demanded.

"Mom's been uncharacteristically reluctant to do so since the last time," the nurture unit's enhanced hearing just managed to pick up through the brick wall.

"Yeah, well," the chief returned dryly, "moms get funny like that when someone shoots their kids, I'm sure she'll get over it."

Emily selected a sigh of resignation from her emotion generator. Humans had a tendency to say things they didn't mean, her tone identifier clearly indicated that the chief did not think it was 'funny' that Mrs. Gulch had stopped offering to babysit DG. Simple extrapolation would postulate that he was in accord with her sentiments on the matter. The nurture unit really didn't understand humans: the whole _point_ of having a bodyguard was so that there was someone on hand willing to take bullets for their charges. True, that generally did not include being shot _by_ their charges, but getting shot could be anticipated by the job description. One little misadventure and everyone made such a fuss, completely forgetting that it was the cop's own carelessness that had endangered them in the first place. A search with her internal database, however, did prove that mother's were inherently inclined to take the part of their own offspring. Still, the woman had assured the then distraught princess that she did not blame her, and yet her subsequent actions, or rather curtailing of actions suggested...

The cyborg sighed again, humans were so contrary.

Escorting the princess back into the station a few hours later – because while she had been instructed not to bring DG back, Emily couldn't resist the ten year old's pleas to be given the opportunity to make amends – the mother unit was no closer to comprehending the intricacies of the human mind. The mischievous princess had been perfectly serious in her gift selection and the policeman that had banished her was entirely unperturbed by her precipitous return. While the logic of the peace offering was entirely clear to the cyborg's CPU, she did not understand how it could accomplish the task of gaining the forgiveness DG craved yet fail to remove the restriction laid down regarding her future care. Human's refused to think in straight logical lines as far as Emily could tell; the destruction of the tie had not been the main offence, she was sure, yet its replacement was considered adequate. In fact, it was deemed more than adequate.

Watching the princess struggling to knot the new tie around the cop's neck, strangling him all over again in the process, the tic tok wondered at their laughter, and in analysing the tangibles of human interaction, missed the metaphor.


	7. Problematic

_Disclaimer: Still don't own Tin Man, alas and woe._

_Author's Note: One year anniversary of writing fanfiction! Woot woot! Remembered what I forgot to mention in the last AN (because I was more than half asleep at the time): added poll to profile, some of you may have noticed. And GoldenRoya informs me that at long last E. Gulch has been added to the character bar. About. Damn. Time._

_PS Tried to get this posted while it was still the fifth, but sadly communications with Quality Control made me a half hour late. Sigh._

* * *

...

Hank couldn't help but cognate on the various difficulties of relying on a protection detail so unofficial that its members didn't even know it existed. You couldn't give them orders, for one thing, there was no chain of command for them to acknowledge, and though the princess' protection detail only had the one guard, he had a disconcerting habit of completely taking over the operation one day, and disclaiming all responsibility the next. And while Officer Gulch, in the Otherside vernacular, always came through in the end, the support staff he'd accumulated had rendered itself unavailable, which was excessively awkward when the cop was in the midst of one of his frequent, inadvertent holidays – also known as injured leave. Even more problematic was the policeman's unexpectedly firm stance on times and places he wouldn't take custody of the princess – a list that was growing inconveniently long and included, among other things, the police station, his house, and pretty much anywhere containing farm machinery...or paper shredders. Oddly enough, once she was already _in_ his custody, the cop seemed to have no problem with taking her anywhere he or she needed to go. So the solution seemed to be getting DG somewhere where their paths might cross and allowing Officer Gulch's protective instincts to take over from there.

Thus it was that Emily had selected Shelly Gibbons for temporary caretaker of the O.Z.'s greatest hope. The human woman had not only managed to successfully rear a healthy young offspring to the same eleven years as the princess, and, in theory, should be capable of attending an additional progeny for a few hours at least, but she was also located on what the mother unit had carefully calculated to be the most probable route of frequent Officer Gulch traverse. Or failing the Otherside guard, someone who was liable to call for the policeman's assistance anyhow. It was a perfectly logical solution...

...or at least so the nurture units had thought at the time. Walking through the emergency room doors that sunny afternoon, Hank had reason to doubt the veracity of their hypothesis. Shelly had clearly demonstrated her inability to properly attend to the princess' supervision needs; worse still, she was not cognisant of the need to call in DG's protection detail the moment the eleven year old strayed from her line of sight. Statistics showed that the sooner Officer Gulch could be alerted to what the local law enforcement had labelled a 'Code DG', the less damage was incurred, either to the princess or the cop. True, there were a few outliers to the data, but still...

The cyborg's etiquette protocol prompted him to nod greeting to the charge nurse as he passed the desk. The woman's voice had lost its professional manner in humour when she'd informed them, amidst the details of the so-called Troublesome Twosome's latest visit, that pretty well everyone at the hospital had their home numbers memorized, indeed, most of the ER had them on speed dial. The father unit wasn't entirely certain regarding the validity of her research, but he did note that his preset greeting had him nodding like one of those strange bobbing imitation canines some Othersiders liked to put in their vehicles as he followed the nurse's instructions to look for DG in 'the usual room'. Most of the people here were already in his database.

"Is that him?" a hissing whisper carried down the hallway to Hank's auditory systems.

"Yes," another voice breathed back, "I _told_ you they'd be in sooner or later."

"You think he knew she'd do that?" the first wondered quietly.

"Are you _kidding?_" the second scoffed, "He is quite nobly throwing himself on the convalescent DG grenade – she'd be running us off our feet if he hadn't."

"She's got a broken leg," the unknown whisperer protested.

"That wouldn't stop her, _believe_ me," replied the person Hank's voice matching program had identified as one of the local nurses.

There was a slight pause then the unidentified woman cooed, "That is positively _adorable_...is he dating anyone?"

"Dream on, girl," the nurse laughed, "if that hunk of manliness was available there'd be line of girls stretched across the prairie waiting to fight over him. I hear that he is desperately in love with a girl he met while in police academy but her father won't let them speak to each other because she'd a bit young and he doesn't approve. They say he's waiting for her."

"_No_," the stranger gasped in awe, "that sounds _so_ romantic, just like a novel."

"_Exactly_," a new voice interjected, "a bit too much like a romance novel if you ask me, I'd bet you a day in triage that it's all hogwash. You ask me and I'd say that DG's Elmer and Emily's love child. Has to be the way he dotes over the girl – I hear tell Emily calls him at all hours day or night if DG gets up to mischief, and that ain't normal for folks who ain't related. Tell you what I think..."

"I don't care to hear what you think," a fourth individual cut in scathingly, "because it is all too clear that your thoughts are full of the kind filth that gives gossip a bad name. I've known Elmer Gulch all his life and I can tell you he'd never so much as consider taking up with a married woman. Not to mention he'd have been in high school when DG was born and you know darn well they didn't even move here until the child was five. I would sooner believe the boy was caught in some hopeless passion straight from the pages of a Harlequin romance than that he'd fathered a child with a married woman when he was fifteen years old."

"Well then, what's the reason you think Mr. Perfect Bachelor doesn't have a girlfriend anywhere anyone can see?" the third party questioned snidely, "You think he's gay perhaps?"

Snorting, the cop's defender uttered drily, "Not after the way he used to moon after my Marisa he's not. Foolish girl took up with some acrobat while at college and let Elmer slip right through her fingers. You mark me, Elmer Gulch will find himself a girl when he's good and ready, and she'll be damned lucky to have him. You're just bitter because...Hank!" the woman cut off abruptly as the nurture unit turned the corner, alerting them as to his presence.

The four women crouched in the doorway to the princess' hospital room looked up at the tic tok with a mixture of abashed and guilty faces. They lost no time in finding excuses to scatter, as Hank's CPU indicated was normal behaviour for human's who'd been caught gossiping by the subject of their discourse, or someone greatly interested in it at any rate.

The father unit hardly paid them any attention, however, he was too systems loaded with his duty to ensure the princess' safety compounded by the sudden cognition he had regarding the two people currently occupying the hospital bed before him. DG was awake, looking the standard of health, excepting her cast leg, and humming merrily as she scribbled away with a variety of coloured markers. Her preferred canvas was propped up in some approximation of comfort against the headboard, sleeping soundly and apparently oblivious to the fact that the eleven year old had made liberal use of her writing devices over every patch of his skin she could access as well as his own cast. Oddly enough, the markings managed to be decorative rather than disfiguring, and there was a sign on his chest designating him the princess' 'Menacing Hero'.

If the nurses were to be believed regarding the policeman's desirability – and Emily ratified their assessment – then the father unit could calculate the distinct possibility of certain..._complications_ in the future. The child was young yet, with many years of physical and cognitive development between her and accepted maturity, but she had already shown a predilection towards the males of the species. Just last summer she had declared herself heart-broken over some youth. The cop had assured the worried mother unit that it was a first crush and would pass, but he'd also spent the remainder of the season legally persecuting the male for his impertinence. Hank derived a certain amount of importance from this behaviour. For the unofficial protection detail to work, it had been necessary to encourage an emotional bond between the Othersider and the princess, but it occurred to the tic tok now that there was an inconvenient risk of the bond becoming too deep. DG could not be allowed to become too attached to the Otherside or its denizens. The cyborg's brows furrowed in a worry response...

...but that was a distant problem, Hank realized, his programmed optimism asserting itself, steps could be taken to mitigate the damage and prevent further technical difficulties. Besides, the nurture unit had just belatedly finished analysing an inopportune outcome of the situation – Officer Gulch had just put himself on the injured list _again._

Guards that didn't know they were guards were so problematic.


	8. Warning

_Disclaimer: I'shno' ownin' dish._

_Author's Note: I decided sometime last week, as they-who-developed-and-continually-alter-my-class-schedule-as-they-see-fit were driving me to the verge of collapse, inducing a state of exhaustion where I was having difficulty forming words much less sentences (seriously, it took me five attempts to say 'seriously' and I wasn't even exaggerating), and otherwise making my life miserable, that if they _are_ going to try to kill me this semester we are going to be doing it on _my_ terms. That being said, three things are going to happen no matter what they might do to thwart me: I am going to sleep – somehow, somewhere it's gonna happen; I am going to eat real food (= I'm cooking) at regular intervals – even if I have to set up a buffet table in the middle of the classroom to do it; and I am going to write, end of story (or start of story, as it were). My feet are planted, the growling has commenced, bring it the fudge on._

_PS The AN has absolutely nothing to do with the story but I've gotta say, the title is appropriate._

* * *

...

* * *

Hank stared at the two women in front of him with irreconcilable puzzlement. He simply couldn't calculate a single logical reason why they should represent a threat to him: both females were of diminutive stature, they had reached a minimally advanced stage of maturation, and neither of them possessed a solitary component of the physical enhancements and mechanical advantages the nurture unit had been built with. In all simulations his CPU could produce, in a violent altercation between the three, even with the two humans working in conjunction with one another, the humans' physical resources would be categorically outclassed by the cyborg's inherent force production capabilities. So it was utterly beyond the tic tok's comprehension why at the sight of them should have set off every alarm in the Consort's Otherside cultural integration data package.

"DANGER! DANGER!" Ahamo's alert blared across the visual field of Hank's information processor, "Do not engage! Do NOT engage!"

Which was all acceptable and functional, except if there _was_ a danger – and the father unit still couldn't seem to identify it – there was the slight complication of the princess having wandered right into the hazard zone.

"DG," Mrs. Gulch cooed sweetly, "you'd like a piece of carrot cake now wouldn't you?"

"Now now," Maggie Spencer chided in a tone that should have been friendly, but wasn't, "we can't have her spoiling her dinner now can we? Here, child, have a devilled egg, it'll go nicely with whatever your mother's got planned and won't spoil your appetite at all."

"Oh rubbish," Mama Gulch scoffed back, "she's an active girl, about to hit her growth spurt anytime now, there's no such _thing_ as spoiling her dinner, unless, of course, someone gives her food poisoning. She'll be hungry again in five minutes, and we can't have that now can we?" she added in a motherly voice, "Have a stuffed mushroom, dear."

"Well in that case," Mrs. Spencer interjected politely, cutting the other woman off, "there's no reason why she can't try a bit of everything and tell us what she thinks."

Hank surveyed the altercation anxiously; whatever threat he might be ignorant of, the princess had obviously detected it. DG was standing stock still, her blue eyes wide and apprehensive as she squeaked tremulously, "I j-just came t-to see if-f Popsicle w-would lend me a few d-dollars for the fair r-rides."

"Oh no worries honey," Maggie assured the child with a purr, "in that case, what say you have a little taste testing of all the nutritious foods we have here and tell us which you like best, loser has to give you ten dollars."

"Margaret Phyllis Spencer!" Mama Gulch gasped, scandalized, "Is it _possible_ that you are bribing the child?"

"Of course not Em, dear," the woman responded smoothly, "it's more of a reward for excellent tastes, you notice I didn't say _who_ would be giving her the reward."

Emma Gulch's eyes narrowed speculatively as she contemplated her rival. The princess, Hank noticed, was eyeing her surroundings desperately as if in search of an escape. He wanted to help her, truly he did – it was his one goal and purpose in this world after all – but the triggered warnings had only gotten more insistent and were currently flashing 'Do not move! Do NOT draw attention to yourself!' in urgent red letters across his visual processor.

"DG!" a new voice called, "There you are. Missy asked me to tell you that if you don't hurry up they're going to go without you. What are you standing around here...for...oh," Officer Gulch trailed off warily, discerning the danger in a glance. "Back. Away. Slowly," the Otherside bodyguard extraordinaire murmured to the princess in the calming voice of a lion tamer, "Here's twenty bucks, take it, go, run for your life."

"Honestly Elmer," Mama Gulch huffed in a voice that was half laughter – and half _not_ – as the twelve year old followed the cop's advice with uncharacteristic promptness and sprinted for safety.

The policeman merely smiled at her serenely and pronounced, "Mom's cooking is better, everyone happy?"

"Oh you don't count," Maggie Spencer harrumphed, "you are completely biased, not to mention under familial obligation to vote for your mother. Get out of here and stop spoiling our fun. Off with you now, shoo! Meddlesome boy," she complained as the policeman laughingly obeyed.

The cyborg wondered why, when the invisible peril was evidently past, Ahamo's alert system was still wailing warnings at him. Selecting the shrug response, the father unit elected to retrace the princess' path of egress in order to ensure that she was in a state of sufficient supervision.

"Hank," Emma Gulch called out imperiously as he turned away, "are you hungry?"

His forward motion halted an increment. Fear was not an easy emotion for tic toks to learn; fear was a sentiment of self preservation and the cyborgs' synthetic minds just didn't interpret their existence the same way humans did. Nevertheless, as the two women locked onto the nurture unit with gimlet gazes that were improbably identical for all the divergence of their features, Hank had the uncomfortable feeling that just _might_ have been fear trickling down his spine.

"You are screwed," the flashing red danger signals informed him helpfully, "Can't say I didn't warn you."


	9. Predator

_Disclaimer: Je ne possède pas le Tin Man._

_Author's Note: I had to rewrite this twice; I wonder why it is that those chapters that I look forward to seem so disinclined to cooperate with me. Maybe it's because it's a thinking chapter._

* * *

...

* * *

Emily watched the confrontation before her in a state of systems freeze, situation analysis jamming up as her environmental sampler clashed with comparative data and input discordant with recognized behavioural norms. Not that the policeman's actions were outside of normal operating parameters per say, there was just something within the qualitative field that her mostly quantitative CPU just couldn't seem to wrap its wires around. So the cyborg watched, her Princess Protection Protocols activated but momentarily satisfied with the Otherside bodyguard's current handling of the situation. Whatever it was in the cop's bearing that was disturbing her, the cop had placed himself – as always – between DG and the potential threat, and that was more than enough for the mother unit.

Officer Gulch had been less than impressed to receive that phone call from the Chief, something to do with the lateness of the hour and his former status of blissful sleep, or at least so the nurture unit had been able to reconstruct from the general mush vaguely resembling words slurred through the communication device. He'd responded promptly, if wearily, to the Code DG, however, as everyone involved had known he would. Emily had pondered the futility of the younger policeman's edict against the nurture units calling him at home when he was off duty considering everyone else was going to do it anyhow. It would be much more expedient for them to make direct contact rather than working through intermediaries after all, especially at those times where time was of the essence (essence of what she wasn't entirely sure).

Half asleep and grumpy as he was, the off duty cop took mere moments to perceive where the princess might be. The tic tok could not comprehend how her stern and logical representations earlier that night as to why DG was too young to go should have developed into certain probability that the thirteen year old would put in a clandestine appearance at the rodeo dance currently being held at a nearby community hall, but both lawmen were convinced this was so. Furthermore, they were fairly concerned about the combination of alcohol and certain riders they hadn't liked the look of when put in proximity with DG, who had a certain knack for finding trouble. There was no clear danger, but the potential for disaster was enough that Officer Gulch was up, dressed and heading out the door before he'd even hung up the phone.

There were predators hiding beneath the visages of some humans, this was something Emily had come to realize during her eight year stay on the Otherside. She didn't understand what it was in humankind that made some of them prey on the weak and vulnerable among them where others would seek to shield and protect. It was puzzling how with such similar genetic blueprinting – much as she and Hank were wired the same – some could consider children to be targets while the rest of the race considered them sacrosanct, as was only logical in a mortal species whose children were its future and its continuation. The mother unit wondered sometimes if the programming was faulty or if the destructive behavioural patterns were a glitch in the system of the organic machine.

It was an old cognition, and was not her main concern as she and the princess' Otherside bodyguard raced towards DG's location from opposite directions. To be honest, Officer Gulch had seemed just as concerned about the dance attendees' safety as he had been about the princess', right up until the moment he spotted her and took off across the dance floor in the manner of a cop who has detected trouble in the making. Emily was not as surprised as she might have once been at the human lawman's having discerned DG's location before the cyborg, despite her many extra sensory advantages. The nurture units had learned annuals – years – ago that while not as reliable, human instinct was much faster than a probability generator any day. Emily was still calculating the variables for why this was so, but she'd wasted no time in following the policeman across the room.

The princess was quickly being backed into a corner when the mother unit caught sight of her; DG's face had contained the elements of both fear and anger, as well as absolute shock at finding a danger in her safe little town that was not of her own making. The man chasing her was big, drunk and decidedly predatory, and the tic tok had the sudden realization that the princess was reaching a state of maturity where her youth would not protect her, if, indeed, it ever would have. Alerts had started going off in her CPU, the programmed restraints on her enhanced strength were lifted, the cyborg prepared to intervene in a manner that may well expose her true nature to the denizens of this realm...

...and Officer Gulch slipped smoothly in between DG and the looming threat, and though the unknown human male was several measures larger than the policeman, drunkenly belligerent and inclined to be angry at the plain clothed cop's interference, the princess' Otherside guard promptly left him in no doubt of who was in charge of this situation.

Which, in the end, was what brought about the source of Emily's systems freeze. The policeman's left hand had settled reassuringly on DG's shoulder to pull her protectively behind him; his right arm was outstretched to lay an implacably restraining hand on the big stranger's chest, keeping him away from the thirteen year old. The teenager, meanwhile, had relaxed perceptively, even to human senses, and was currently busy trying to pretend that her attempt at teen rebellion hadn't ended with her leaning into the cop's back like he was a big walking security blanket. And while this was well within the expected outcome measures, the would-be predator was backing down fast, alcohol debilitated senses notwithstanding, under the weight of Officer Gulch's quiet words and the unsettling glint in the smaller man's eyes...

...the glint that was making the tic tok ponder whether the question really was what made some humans predators, or rather, what it was they chose for prey.


	10. Human

_Disclaimer: Trying to assassinate my computer will not stop me from writing stories whether I own Tin Man or not. Alas that it is not._

_Author's Note: So my computer did the blue screen of death the other day, slightly disturbing for the class I was in at the time as I kind of exclaimed in horror...and then all the weird beeping started. The nice thing about being in a small program? You learn who your techies are. I don't know what he did but the thing is functioning again. First thing I did was back up my fanfics and then everything else because this computer is going to die sooner or later, it's been threatening to pretty much since I got it. Alas that I can't afford to replace it or I would help it on its way. Stupid piece of junk...but please, keep working._

_PS Assuming you've been keeping track of the comparative timelines, I should imagine you know what is to come over the next few chapters so you should be prepared._

* * *

...

Emily knew her internal chronometer must be broken. Time was not relative; no matter how arbitrary the increments of its measure, that continuum in which events passed from one to another continued in its flow unaffected by the activities of man. Tic toks did not experience time 'flying by' or 'slowing to a crawl', their time ticked by in the regular increments invented by humankind to measure the intangible continuation of perceptual conversion, present becoming past, future becoming present. Each second was measured out, identical to the last; each minute contained sixty of these, no matter the quantity or quality of the actions contained within. Time could not be altered, it was merely time.

Which was how the mother unit knew her chronometer had broken the instant she'd answered the phone and heard the voice of Officer Gulch, almost unrecognizable for the strain, worry, guilt, fear, pain, and the absolute clutter of emotion humans could sometimes convey when they wanted to be really complex about a reaction, trying to keep a reassuring tone as he told her the nurture units were needed in the Colorado Rockies because the princess had fallen off a cliff. For while the cyborg knew her CPU continued to select responses and catalogue information at the same rate it always had, her internal clock seem to indicate that far more was going on within those increments than could possibly occur by the laws of physics – and the Otherside always obeyed the laws of physics. Even now the speedometer indicated that they were travelling faster than the rate at which numbers were added to the odometer seemed to credit.

They had grown...complacent, Emily was forced to acknowledge as the scenery blurred past despite her reckoning. Confident in their calculations, careful in their weighing of cultural norms and cognitive and emotional maturation against their mission to protect the princess, compromising on both to reach the further goal of raising her up right, the nurture units had been all too willing to substitute the cop for themselves in the task of chaperoning the youths on their hard won expedition. It had not even been their idea – for once – the veritable dragon that DG claimed had been guarding the children at the local school for centuries now (the cyborg reasoned that the princess must have been using figurative terms as Ms. Beckley didn't look anything like a dragon and humans didn't live that long) had decided that even she was unequal to the task of shepherding the fourteen year old girl safely through the mountains and thus exacted a rather belated detention on a former pupil of hers. Accustomed as they were to entrusting the burden of the princess' safety to the policeman's hands, the tic toks hadn't even hesitated in adding their entreaties to the tutor's in order to convince the Othersider to spend his vacation guarding DG...and her fellows. Nor did the cyborgs allow their cognitions be disturbed by the thought of the princess being beyond their reach, so sure were they of his success. They had simple failed to perceive one simple and undeniable fact:

Officer Gulch was only human.

_Human and prone to error_, the mother unit thought as the landscape changed steadily towards mountainous outside the vehicles window, _a being of limits, doomed to failure once those limits had been reached._ He'd admitted as much himself, over the phone, apologizing for not having been faster, for not having watched DG better, for not having caught her...and then the phone had been snatched away by Ms. Beckley, who'd acidly commented on fools that scrambled down perilous cliffs after wayward children and then thought they had anything to apologize for. The old harridan had added a few sharp remarks regarding the laying – or claiming – of blame and ordered him off with a doctor Emily belatedly discerned had been getting increasingly belligerent in the background regarding the treatment of the cop's own wounds. The mother unit dismissed this as unimportant, the princess' guard was always getting wounded, this, however, was the first time he'd failed.

Only human, well intentioned, determined, and dedicated, the very best candidate they'd yet found and still he was insufficient to the task. It was almost enough to make a tic tok despair. Emily analysed how she could have omitted such a large flaw from her calculations right up until the moment she walked into DG's hospital room to discover the policeman slumped over in a chair drawn up to the side of the bed. The sleeping guard's head was cradled in one arm as it rested next to the princess' pillow; his other arm was outstretched to allow him to wrap the fingers of his splinted, bandaged right hand around DG's own undamaged one. As the nurture units paused in the doorway for observation, the fourteen year old shifted fretfully in her sleep and muttered about falling, causing Officer Gulch's fingers to tighten around her wrist as he rumbled indistinctly, "Ivego'oo," calming her instantly...

...and suddenly Emily is certain that it is not only her chronometer that is broken, because despite all evidence to the contrary, she's not so certain the cop's failed the princess after all.


	11. Lifeline

_Disclaimer: You already know what I am going to say, so how's about we just move along then? Don't own Tin Man._

_Author's Note: So I hate this chapter and Quality Control likes it, go ahead, give her bragging rights (because, really, I don't want them). I do hope she is wrong about the revolt she figures you are going to have, though. That being said, Happy Birthday Gulch Verse! That's right, a year ago today I made the fatal error of answering my muse's little whim and, well, here we are (thank you to the fanfic site for keeping track of things like posting dates because I certainly wouldn't have thought to). I meant to write a certain oneshot that popped into my head recently to celebrate today but unfortunately this chapter was blocking me, Gulch will have to settle for a late birthday present and I don't think he's going to like it. No, it's not actually a birthday story, it's just, well, shall we say, true to the Gulch Verse? Or at least so it claims, chapters haven't exactly been behaving lately. Grumble grumble grumble._

* * *

...

Hank was beginning to wonder what the purpose was of having a probability generator if it invariably failed to produce a reliable odds ratio for anything the princess might decide to do. Even with factoring in relevant data from the Consort's parenting manual (Tips for Parenting a Potentially Problematic Child as Reverse Engineered by a Fellow Who Was the Kind of Child that Gave Parents Problems, Chapter Five: So now you are raising a teenage girl...good _luck_ – which, while of dubious scientific value, was considerably more helpful than Chapter Six: Boys will be boys, so shoot them all now and save yourself a lot of trouble) the likelihood of DG, having gone to bed two hours ago (checked on one hour ago), showing up at the door well past midnight, hauling a semi-conscious policeman hadn't even been considered in the list of possible outcomes. Blinking at the pair, the cyborg set off a systems analysis to determine how it was possible that he had mistaken cleverly piled bedding for the actual form of the princess, because while it was chronologically possible for the fifteen year old to have snuck out, made her way to wherever she'd acquired the cop, and returned in the time since the father unit followed tip 5.2.1 (check the bed of your teenager, they are not going to be in it), his probability generator deemed it unlikely. Of course, DG shouldn't, by any calculations, have shown up driving Officer Gulch's truck, under-aged and unlicensed as she was, and yet the evidence that she had done so was irrefutable. The tic tok had an uneasy feeling that there were many variables at work here that his processor just seemed incapable of synthesizing...

"Popsicle, can you give me a hand here?" the teenager huffed irritably as she struggled under the cop's weight, Officer Gulch listed to the side as he seemed utterly incapable of sorting his left foot from his right.

"Baby girl!" the father unit began, reaching forward to steady the policeman, "What..."

"DG!" Emily cried, hastening into the room, "Lord have mercy, what have you done to the poor man now?"

"Me?" the princess hissed in indignation even as she found herself suddenly being swung off course.

"Don' let'er ge' me," the Otherside bodyguard yelped, coming suddenly to life and spinning DG into the path of the oncoming mother unit with such haste and entire lack of coordination that only Hank's enhanced strength kept the three of them from keeling right over.

It was at this point that Hank realized that Officer Gulch wasn't injured as the nurture units had initially assumed, but rather extremely intoxicated. He wondered if chapter 5 section 2.3 (so now your teenager is drunk) could be made applicable to the adults of the species.

"Cut that out!" DG scolded, "It's just Momster..."

"Kno' dat," the cop interrupted, "notta 'ero, no doin' anyting 'roic, don' let'er ge' me."

"Yeah, sure, whatever," the princess agreed blindly, "Popsicle, help me get him over to the sofa," she added, re-establishing her grip on the policeman's arm and attempting to propel him forward.

"Shorry," he muttered as the trio careened sideways into the coffee table.

It took them several minutes to cross the short distance from the front door to the living room sofa, by which point Hank was almost willing to risk betraying his cybernetically enhanced strength and just toss the cop across the room and save the princess the effort. Winded, DG sank down beside the couch with an uncharacteristic scowl while the nurture units surveyed the situation and calculated how to proceed from here.

Tutting in accordance to her mothering protocols, Emily sighed, "I'm going to call Mrs. Gulch and let her know where her son is."

Officer Gulch flinched, DG sucked in a sharp breath and hissed, "_Momster_," in a horrified whisper, but the mother unit was already immobilizing in response to the systems freeze her own statement had produced.

They'd been malfunctioning like that a lot recently, Hank and Emily had, ever since the elder Gulches had ceased to number amongst the living residents of the small farming community. Neither tic tok could quite explain the glitch, with their perfect memories and near instantaneous fact recall, adjusting to the change in group dynamic should have been effortless, and yet both found themselves occasionally preparing to contact beings that no longer existed in their corporeal realm. The father unit had never really understood the myriad of ways humans responded to death. It was an unavoidable event in their mortal lives, visited and glimpsed repeatedly throughout their existence at nearer and farther emotional distances until at long last it came for each individual in turn, and yet it always seemed to take them by surprise. One would think they would have learned to accept it better as one of the facts of the universe: one plus one equals two, the atmosphere reflects light in such a way as to be perceived as blue, people died...and yet still they railed against it, fought with it, denied it long after the truth had grown cold and silent before them.

Hank speculated whether it was the sudden absence of accustomed outside resources that they so abhorred. Mr. Gulch had always been a willing auditor for the cyborg's stories of how this or that piece of farm machinery had been reduced to so much scrap metal during an attempt to make a minor repair. The ex army mechanic had often been able to offer a few suggestions which, in conjunction with a visit from his son or the man himself, were occasionally capable of performing a miraculous resurrection of the previously defunct machine. Mrs. Gulch, meanwhile, had had an avid interest in DG, and as her offspring had always been in regular contact with the princess, so had the nurture units been in frequent contact with her. It seemed...odd that they were no longer accessible. In Milltown, a tic tok's programs and memory files could be copied so that in the event of critical malfunction, the unit's experiences could be preserved for the benefit of future models, but when a human died, they were just...gone.

"I gotsta go 'ome," Officer Gulch slurred, interrupting the father unit's processing as he struggled to heave himself off the sofa, "imposhing."

"Oh no you don't!" DG commanded, shoving him back down again, "You are staying right here if I have to sit on you all night," she growled, thwarting his attempts to sit up, a feat the diminutive teen likely only achieved because the cop's faculties were currently impaired.

"'m fine, jusht le'me..."

"_Fine!_ You call this _fine?_" the princess howled, "You couldn't even stand up when I found you!"

The policeman's eyes flickered and fell beneath the fifteen year old's furious gaze, Hank thought he caught a glimpse of shame on the cop's face before the Othersider declared defensively, "Ya shouldna been in da bar."

"_You_ shouldn't have been in the bar," DG hissed back fiercely, "What were they _thinking_ taking you out to drown your sorrows?"

"No' drown shorrows," Officer Gulch corrected hastily, "Chiefsh gonna be a granddad, we'sh shelebratin'."

Hank contemplated whether he'd misinterpreted the cop's tone, it had almost sounded bitter...

"Where 'ou goin'?" the policeman demanded as the princess stood abruptly.

"Going to get you a glass of water," she replied huskily, turning away.

Sitting up appeared to be a rather hazardous task for the inebriated human, but he did it anyway, far faster than the cyborg would have credited, his hand shooting out to capture the teenager's wrist even as the rest of him swayed precariously. "'re you cryin'?"

A tear trickled down the girl's cheek as she lied, "No."

For all she'd been careful to keep her voice steady and back turned on the policeman, he wasn't fooled and with a sharp tug he pulled the teen down beside him. "I be alrigh'," he murmured, wrapping his arms around the princess, "I'll be alrigh'."

DG huffed in frustration. "Can't you stop taking care of others for five seconds to take care of yourself?" she grumbled as she returned the hug.

"Hmm, no?"

As the princess let out a watery chuckle and punched the cop on the arm, the father unit watched the pair with growing concern. The townsfolk had been commenting on how well the policeman had been bearing up under the tragedy, how he was doing far better than anyone could have expected. They hadn't seen him at times like these. The princess had been going out of her way the past few months to keep an eye on Officer Gulch, dropping by his place after school, hauling him back to the farmhouse for supper and company. She'd load his plate with food and wouldn't let him budge from the table until it was all eaten; she'd even curtailed some of her more adventurous activities to the extent that the tic tok was of the impression that the policeman was becoming worried by her good behaviour. The cyborg had been cognisant of a reversal in their roles even as the cop became even more protective of the princess than he'd already been: Officer Gulch was holding onto DG like a lifeline.

Hank understood the concept of lifelines. In the creation of every cyborg there was a step in the process during which the organic and inorganic components were fused and maintained through a delicate feed of light and nutrients – lifelines. If anything went wrong during this process, the developing tic tok was lost, thus there were redundant systems in place to ensure critical errors did not occur. This was what concerned the father unit as he looked at the Othersider, the cop had no back-up systems, just a solitary lifeline, and a dangerous one at that...

"You really smell," DG remarked, disrupting the cyborg's processes once more, causing Officer Gulch to snort in drunken amusement, and just like that the humans have stepped inexplicably, momentarily beyond their grief, leaving the tic toks floundering in their wake.

Across the room Emily shook herself free of systems freeze and went off to procure the forgotten glass of water and a few blankets for the policeman. Hank, however, was stuck on the notion of lifelines. Human lifelines aren't interchangeable or easy to make, this he understood, some they were born with, others they discovered along the way, and the nurture unit was uneasily aware that the tic toks had actively blocked their chosen bodyguard's ability to find alternatives. But surely, the cyborg reasoned, the cop was invested enough in the princess' wellbeing that they could afford to let him make new ties without worrying that it would affect his duties. Wasn't there a pleasing looking female that had showed interest in Officer Gulch not that long ago? Hank did a quick search of his database to confirm that indeed, this female specimen did exist – she had all the right parts in all the right places after all, and the tic tok was further pleased that he had happened to take note of her name:

Roxanne.


	12. Men

_Disclaimer: It's been a while, I don't own Tin Man, right? Darn. Don't own Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy either; try to find the line I corrupted._

_Author's Note: I hereby dedicate this chapter to the makers of Tin Man fanvids, most particularly to the maker of the fanvid that crossed Tin Man with Alice and, well, _paired_the Tin Man with Alice (which I don't approve of, by the way). Why? Because they left some of the dialogue in the video (usually something that annoys me, interrupts the song). Why does that matter? Because dialogue = Cain speaking = Pavlovian reaction (which apparently I haven't managed to completely shut down – I do NOT drool over guys, I refuse) = muse and inner child going skipping about in mental playing field causing an extensive bout of hyperactivity = animegus farmus bouncing all over her room (literally, fortunately my bed is big enough to handle the diving roll before I flip over the end and land on my feet rather than smacking into the window) = FINALLY getting brain-brain back on track and writing stories. Let us hope that I haven't grown rusty in the meantime. Sorry it took me so long, but it took me a while to get clear of the exams and the writer's block (and, I'll admit, the zombie shooting – fortunately I've gotten a bit bored with the game, that and my roommate is moving out and I am suddenly lacking a TV to play on)._

* * *

...

Emily, nurture unit and cyborg, being of intellect and logic, construct of metal and light, found, in this one sterling instant of clarity, herself to be at long last in complete understanding and accord with what the Othersiders liked to term 'the battle of the sexes'. She had never truly grasped the concept before, the theory being too based in anecdotal accounts, broad generalizations, and biased qualitative empirical evidence for her methodically scientific CPU to readily comprehend. For a being whose 'gender' was the result of arbitrary assignation of form and programming, the humans' inborn differentiation of mindset had been an utterly alien conception...until today that is. The mother unit looked about her at the culmination of months of chaos and was cognisant of one thing and one thing only: _this_ is what happened when you left a _man_ to do the planning.

Granted, it had sounded like a perfectly reasonable strategy at the time. Hank had been very clear in delineating his logic as to why it would be prudent to cease in their efforts to inhibit Officer Gulch's search for romantic attachment. While she didn't entirely track his analysis of the policeman's need for more ties to the world, she was in perfect accord with the perception of the wisdom regarding slowly weaning DG of her connections to the Otherside. The day was likely some increments off yet, but the truth remained that the time was coming when DG would return to the O.Z., and it would be easier on everyone if they weren't too strongly bound when she did.

Besides, basic protocols dictated that the wellbeing of the guards should be attended to, in as much as it was possible. Officer Gulch had clearly been in desperate need of distraction following the deletion of his parents, and the female the father unit had selected to recommend to the policeman's notice was commonly held to be one of the prettiest women in the neighbourhood.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the only area in which Roxanne was commonly held.

Hank had decided, with incomprehensibly optimistic logic that only a _man_ could produce, that DG's behaviour since the night she'd come storming home, spitting mad and hell bent on a path vengeance, the likes of which the small town had never seen before, was proof that she was acquiring the skills of good leadership she'd need as a member of the Royal Family. See, the cyborg had dictated, she's demonstrating her desire to care for and defend her subjects, Officer Gulch, naturally, having been deemed the sixteen year old princess' minion.

It was easy enough for the father unit to annunciate, _he_ wasn't the one that had to deal with the woman when she came shrieking into the yard after having fallen victim to DG's latest informative example of Why-Officer-Gulch-Is-Not-To-Be-Treated-Like-Yesterday's-Dirty-Laundry. No, _somehow_ Hank was always elsewhere when the Vindictive Screeching Harpy (and she'd thought Ahamo's People: A Quick Classification System would never be of use) came howling after the princess' blood, leaving the mother unit to deal with her. And Emily would very much like to be informed, if the cop was considered a subject of the Realm of DG, what did that make Roxanne?

Apparently an assassin...or an attempted assassin at any rate. A rather incompetent one, too, as DG hadn't even been on her newly purchased and refurbished motorcycle at the time of Roxanne attempt on her life. Indeed, the princess had been quite fortuitously halfway across the parking lot from her 'pride and joy' when the redhead's car had squealed off the road to crash into the Royal Conveyance, stopped, reversed and then drove forward over the motorcycle again before peeling out of the lot, mad laughter echoing in the cyborg's hearing apparatus as she went.

Which is how the sixteen year old exiled princess of the O.Z. had come to be sitting in the machine shed, surrounded by the various pieces of the carefully dismantled wreckage as she sorted out the intact, damaged, and unusable parts. All because her father unit had erred in his assessment of what he'd perceived of as a 'good idea'.

"How's she doing?" a friendly voice enquired quietly.

The teenager sniffed miserably. "I can't fix it," she mumbled, her head bent over a scrap of twisted metal she was turning in her hands, "There's too much damage, too many pieces that can't be fixed and I can't replace them," she told them, rubbing a hand over her eyes and keeping her back turned in a manner Emily had come to recognize as an attempt to disguise tear leakage.

A muscle twitched in the cop's jaw as the nurture unit turned towards him, but he replied mildly enough, "If it's any consolation, I have a warrant for her arrest."

DG's head whipped around. "I want to watch," she growled, her bloodshot eyes furiously intent, "I want to see you arrest her."

The policeman huffed, "You know I can't do that, DG."

"Look at this!" the princess cried, scrambling to her feet to wave the damaged hunk of metal in front of his face, "I can't fix this! I spent _weeks_ getting that bike running and I hardly even got to ride it o-nce," she sobbed, her voice cracking over the words.

Emily's mothering protocols informed her that a hug was in order, but before she could respond, Officer Gulch sighed, "I know, DG, I know, but I also know you've spent _months_ hounding Roxie, and while that doesn't excuse or condone-"

"I never did anything that couldn't be fixed! Hair grows back, permanent marker wears off eventually, and nails can be removed from the door! And you can't prove it was me!"

"Which is why _she's_ getting arrested and _you_ only get scolded every other day," the policeman pointed out with a role of his eyes, "and you know very well I can't have you sitting in the car when I swing by her house to arrest her. It's against all rules and regulations."

The princess opened her mouth to respond, but all that came out was an odd sort of gargled shriek that the cyborg had come to understand was characteristic of infuriated teenagers the Otherside over. Growling with frustrated rage, the sixteen year old stormed out of the machine shed. The nurture unit tracked the sounds of her heavy footsteps as she tried to figure out which of the myriad of emotions and behaviours she was supposed to attend to first.

Officer Gulch merely sighed and bent to retrieve the broken part DG had dropped on her way out.

Watching him inspect the dented metal, Emily detected a faltering in the princess' footsteps, followed by a pause and a sudden scampering as her erstwhile stomping became an all out sprint.

Officer Gulch glanced around, located a hammer and proceeded to deliver a series of precise blows apparently calculated to reshape the metal into a functional form.

From outside came the quiet scuffing sound of tires being ghosted over gravel.

Humming now, Officer Gulch gave a few more strikes with the hammer and picked up a pair of pliers.

In the distance, Emily detected the reverberations of DG's old dirt bike being coaxed into operation. The nurture unit turned towards the yard in alarm but was distracted by a small smile that quivered momentarily at the corner of the policeman's lips. The cyborg had a sudden cognition of something that greatly resembled suspicion.

Officer Gulch carefully placed the newly restored part back exactly where he'd got it from then began to sift through the rest of the wreckage in a quiet, methodical manner, as if cataloguing the damage.

The mother unit glanced from the road to the cop and back again. The princess was getting farther and farther from either of her caretakers or guard, it was making her early warning system click.

Officer Gulch took one last comprehensive look around the building then casually checked his watched. "Think we've given her enough time yet?" he wondered absently.

Emily further surprised herself by blinking in surprise and stared at him blankly.

"I think I have," the cop decided, strolling idly out into yard.

The mother unit narrowed her ocular apparatus at him. She knew that look; it was remarkably similar to the expression on Hank's face when he had ventured forth to encourage the policeman's liaison with Roxanne. Drawing on her newfound knowledge of certain similarities to be perceived in men, the cyborg was able to discern that _that_ was the look of a man with a plan. The tic tok knew what happened when you let a man do the planning: everything malfunctioned, the princess became an emotionally instable mess (more so than seemed the usual these cycles), and ended up stretching the limits of the law and acceptable behaviour to deliver what she deemed necessary retribution. You let a _man_ do the planning and DG went tearing off on her dirt bike to mobats knows where, and no possible good could come of it...

...so the absolute last thing the mother unit was predicting was for the princess to come bouncing back into the house several hours later, filled with the sense of justice having been served and a renewed faith that, with hard work and good motor repair fairies, her motorcycle could be restored...which went entirely against the previously established hypothesis. And just like that the tic tok's tenuous understanding of the complexities of human nature disappeared in a puff of illogic, leaving Emily so very confused.


	13. Boys

_Disclaimer: Unfortunately the only road to ownership passes through the fields of the Papay and got eaten on the way._

_Author's Note: I hereby dedicate this chapter to Meghan McAlistair, I put in a joke just for you (you'll know it when you see it). On an administrational note, I warn that there may be posting delays in the upcoming months (yes, I know, I just got back from a long one), because I am currently working on my, well, let's go with internship for a word that everyone will understand, and that puts me solidly in a days schedule, whereas Quality Control is firmly on nights. And since she is also three hours behind me, if we are both working on a given day, I can't get story approval as fast as I have been in the past (not to mention a huge chunk of my day is taken up by work that actually keeps my brain busy (and yet I don't get paid, there is something so backwards about that). But, hey, you know me, I can get stubborn about being able to get stories up so I shall do what I can. Cheers._

* * *

...

* * *

Emily looked at the young midsized example of the partially matured male human specimen standing in her doorway with the new genuine emotion of dawning horror. It did not show upon her facial features, her etiquette protocols keeping her greeting cordial, her expressions welcoming, but if the mother unit had had the option she would have very much preferred to poke him with a lightening rod until he went away. The boy was impeccably groomed, was holding a collection of aesthetically pleasing plant life, and was asking for DG – the cyborg was familiar enough with theory of human mating rituals to know what _that_ meant. This was a problem, this had the potential to become an entire cataclysmic malfunction; the youngest princess and only hope of the O.Z. could _not_ be allowed to become romantically interfaced with a denizen of the Otherside, the ramifications could be fatal to everything the nurture units had been sent into this world to do. Worse still, the Consort's parenting guide indicated that any attempt to dissuade a teenage girl from dating any given male of the species was only going to make it more probable that she _would_ – indeed the more strenuous the objection, the more guaranteed the undesirable response would be – so what were they going to _do_?

From within the house came the sound of the formerly reclining policeman's feet hitting the floor.

"So," the youth continued shyly as the tic tok's thoughts proceeded with solution synthesis, "would I be able to-"

"And who might you be?" a voice broke in sharply. Emily nearly had a spontaneous jump response, so preoccupied had she been with dilemma diagnosis she hadn't perceived the lawman's approach. "Well?" the cop prompted impatiently when the teenager just stood there gaping at him.

"M-my name's Zach," the boy stuttered into speech, "I-I'm a relative of the Spencer's-"

"That so?" Officer Gulch interrupted again as he leaned a shoulder against the door frame and crossed his arm. The mother unit fixed the older male in her visual field; the cyborg had seen him interact with human offspring of all ages, and this exhibition of behaviour was an anomaly.

"Y-es," the teen faltered, "A-and you are?"

"Officer Gulch," the man replied shortly, his eyes narrowing in what resembled the beginnings of a glare.

"Well, Offi-"

"Call me sir."

"S-sir-"

"And what brings you here, Zach?" the policeman cut him off yet again. Emily contemplated which item to prioritize: the solving of the relationship conundrum; or the processing of the guard's errant functioning.

"I-I came...I w-wanted to talk to...was h-hoping to ask DG...that is," the youth floundered, only to pause uneasily as the cop straightened slowly to the full of his respectable six feet of height.

"Let's take a walk, Zach," he suggested grimly.

"W-what?" the hapless boy goggled.

"Let's. Take. A walk," Officer Gulch repeated slowly, his right hand coming to rest, almost idly, on butt of his gun. The teenager's face lost a considerable amount of pigmentation; Emily decided to halt analysis of the guard's conduct as it was now projected to have beneficial consequences.

The younger male's eyes widened in alarm as the cop apparently got tired of waiting and strode forward in what, to the cyborg, seemed like an almost hostile manner. Zach obediently stumbled back across the porch and down the steps.

"So," Officer Gulch rumbled as he advanced, "You wanna date DG; you think you're up to specifications?"

"Uh," the youth attempted.

"You think you've got what it takes?" the policeman continued over the boy's floundered, still striding forward, "Think you can handle her and treat her right? You think you're man enough?"

"I-I-I..." the teenager stammered as he bumped into his car then flattened himself against it as if still trying to retreat.

Officer Gulch cornered him there relentlessly, leaning forward to look the teen right in the eye as he growled quietly, "You think you're bulletproof?"

Emily hadn't been aware that humans came in that particular shade of white. Young Zach glanced from the policeman's face to his gun and back in nervous, jerky little movements and let out a strangled squeak.

"Take my advice, Zach," the older man said, "Run."

The teenager complied with alacrity, the wheels of his car spitting gravel as it peeled out of the driveway as fast he could make it go.

"You know," the cop murmured absently as he watched the car speed out of sight, "I really ought to ticket him for that."

The reply was rippling laughter. "Oh, give him a break Mr. Honest Cop," DG chimed as she swung herself nimbly down from her apparent hiding place on the porch roof, "he's had a rough day."

Officer Gulch turned towards her, all signs of his previous ill-humour strangely absent, and arched an eyebrow. "Remind me again why I'm doing this," he inquired mildly.

"Because he was going to ask me out," the seventeen year old supplied promptly.

"Yes, I think I got that," the cop stated blandly.

"And I didn't want to," the girl continued.

"You could have just said no," he suggested.

"No I couldn't, he's Missy's favourite cousin. She called me 'specially to tell me he wanted to ask me out and told me to be nice. If I'd have said no without so much as giving him a chance, she'd have been mad at me."

"Ah, politics," the policeman scowled in distaste, "Worse still, teenage girl politics."

"What? And you don't have to deal with politics?" the seventeen year old asked sceptically.

"I prefer to ignore them until they go away," Officer Gulch replied urbanely.

DG snorted, "Yeah, well I think I came up with the perfect solution: he changes his mind about the whole thing all on his own, I don't have to go out with him, and since I didn't reject him as far as anyone can tell, Missy can't get mad at me. And this way I didn't hurt his feelings either, it's a win-win."

"Riiiiiight," the cop said, glancing down the road where the kicked up dust was the only remaining evidence of the boy's visit, "You know, I almost of feel bad for him, he seemed a nice enough kid."

"Then why'd you agree?"

"He seemed a nice enough kid," the policeman responded promptly, "and it would have been involuntary manslaughter at the very _least_ not to – anyone who backs down like that without so much as asking what business it is of mine to interfere would not survive trying to date you."

Sticking her tongue out at him, the princess chirped, "I guess I'll just have to hold out for a guy that punches you in the face for trying then, won't I?"

"Gee," Officer Gulch said drily, "won't that be something to look forward to."

DG merely grinned cheekily and slipped her hands into the crook of his elbow. "Come on, I promised you lunch," she said merrily, pulling him towards the house.

"I'd rather you promised me good behaviour," the cop grumbled, "Was it absolute necessary to spray paint 'Unidentified person needs to speak to Officer Gulch' across the back of Roxanne's windshield just to get a hold of me?''

"Don't know what you are talking about," the seventeen year old denied instantly, "and sure it was: Nancy refuses to be the Officer Gulch answering service, and since you weren't at the station, leaving a note is way faster than running all over the country looking for you."

"Uh huh," the policeman grunted in response, "Only because half the town called to tell me about before I got through the door, not to mention every Tom, Dick, and Shelly stopping me on the way over to see if I got the message."

"Which is probably the only reason you didn't beat me home – it works better than a Bat Signal," the teenager informed him gleefully, "Not that I did it," she added for the record.

"Have I ever told you how lucky you are that you weren't born in a time or place where everyone knowing you did something was enough to convict you?" Officer Gulch asked with a resigned sigh, "And why, by the by, couldn't you get Hank to do the boy scaring? Not that it wasn't fun and all, but, as your father, isn't that his job?"

"Popsicle?" DG demanded incredulously, "He couldn't chase a mouse away from a granary, he's too nice. I'm amazed you managed it."

"Hey!" objected the cop, "I thought I put in a marvellous performance based on past hideous experience."

"And were trying not to laugh or apologize the whole time, admit it!"

"Humph," he responded, "See if I chase the next boy off for you."

"Well maybe the next one will be such a shining example of manliness and goodness that you won't have to," the princess replied airily.

"In which case I'll give him the exact same advice," Officer Gulch relied promptly, "Run!"

Emily thought that that was a marvellous idea.


	14. Bear

_Disclaimer: My diagnosis is that I don't own Tin Man, it be a terrible disease for which there is no cure._

_Author's Note: So this was written is small chunks over the space of a week, but Quality Control assures me that the quality has not suffered as a result. Then again, I am apparently such an amazing writer that my dad, who has never read my 'strange little stories', has decided I am perfectly qualified to write the script for the next Bourne Identity movie. You know, 'cause I know how to do that. Dad, he gets these ideas, hope nobody minds if Bourne turns into a total klutz. *Snort* This chapter, by the way, is one of those ones that I start writing, and then runs off in an entirely different direction than I had in mind. Got another character trying to bring himself to life, good thing he's stranded in the Otherside where he is relatively harmless. Oh, and I made up a word, well actually Ahamo made up a word and Hank used it, and thus I am absolved of blame in the careless treatment of the English language should anyone catch me at it._

* * *

...

* * *

Hank navigated through the cluster of deciduous plant life with the low decibel stealth feasible only to carefully engineered cyborgs...

"Hey there Hank," a voice commented from a location of superior elevation, "nice night for a walk."

"Reckon so," a second voice opined, "though I'd've taken the deer trail 'bout five yards to the west of ya, make the going a bit easier."

...or to certain humans familiar with the topography.

"You know," Officer Gulch drawled as the nurture unit triangulated their position, "this is taking the whole overprotective parent thing just a touch far. It's just a thought and all, but DG's a big girl now, she should be able to take care of herself."

"Which is why you're sitting up here in my hunting stand watching 'em like a hawk," Farmer Spencer commented dryly just as Hank detected the two human males perched several feet above the cyborg on a suspended platform partially concealed by tree branches. Had the father unit been cognisant of the fact that DG's guard would be out in the woods tonight he wouldn't have let Emily program him into coming.

"It happens to be my job," the cop fired back, "I'm sort of paid to do things like chase down speeders, break up bar fights, monitor for under-aged drinking..."

"And you're doing a fine job of it, sitting all the way up here," the old farmer pointed out.

"It's their grad party," the policeman defended himself, "I'm not that much of a bastard, besides I have no proof that they're drinking alcohol. Those could be soda cans for all I know."

"Sure, if you keep your binoculars outta focus I suppose they can be mistaken for soda cans," Spencer grunted in amusement, "but if that's the case, why don't you move your patrol elsewhere?"

"Because there've been bear sightings in these parts and someone should keep an eye out."

"Exactly," the farmer agreed airily, "which is why I'm here, gotta watch out for that bear. It has nothing to do with the fact that my eighteen year old daughter is drinking down by the river with a bunch of eighteen year old _boys_. Nothing at all. Wanna join us Hank?"

As the nurture unit located the ladder and began his ascent, a thought percolated through his central processor. "Shouldn't someone warn the children?" Hank wondered as he pulled himself onto the platform.

"Now that you mention it," Spencer exclaimed with a smug expression the cyborg had learned to associate with one's opinion being seconded, "maybe someone _should_ warn the children."

"And I suppose that someone should be me," the policeman replied astringently.

"Well Hank and I can't go, we're their fathers and I've been led to believe that it would be terribly 'uncool' for us to put in an appearance," the old farmer reasoned, holding his hands in the air to bob the second and third digit of either hand at the cop in an awkward manner that suggested behavioural mimicry.

"Whereas it's my job to be the party-pooper," Officer Gulch finished dryly.

"As you said your own self not that long ago," Spencer asserted cheerfully as the nurture unit tried to wrap his electrical synapses around the notion that excreting at parties should be in the cop's employment description. Fortunately, his experience database flagged the remark as one of those strange comments Otherside humans liked to make that indicated something other than what they described and inhibited comment, thus saving the cyborg from incredulous response.

"Here Hank," Officer Gulch huffed as the father unit recovered from his abstraction, "you can use my binoculars. Be back in a few."

The nurture unit studied the Otherside device as the policeman slid down the ladder and slipped quietly through the trees towards the deer trail Spencer had mentioned. He didn't actually need the night vision enhanced bifocal visual device; his ocular units were more than adequate for the task at grasping device.

"Don't worry Hank," Spencer assured him, mistaking the cyborg's concern, "it's not peeping, just being a good invisible chaperone letting the kids have their fun. Now if anything _does_ happen that turns this into a peep show, well that's why I brought _this_."

Hank glanced at the shotgun in puzzlement, "I thought that was for the bear."

"The bear? Naw, don't gotta license for bear, this is for any boys who might be thinking of gettin' frisky with my Missy. Wanna borrow it if you need?" the old farmer offered neighbourly.

The cyborg frowned and crosschecked his Otherside dictionary with the Consort's parent guide. Frisky, his CPU informed him, as it pertained to teenage boys, involved attempts at physical contact with an end goal of copulatory interfacing. The father unit's eyebrows narrowed as he considered the Anti-Frisk device and found a glitch. "Isn't that illegal?" he inquired of the farmer.

"Only if the arresting officer and judge aren't fathers themselves," he replied cheerfully.

Hank did not see how the existence of offspring should change the officials' duties, but he applied his logic processor to the problem once more. "Officer Gulch isn't a father," he pointed out, having run the probabilities regarding likely scenario counterparts.

"Not to worry in your case then," Spencer mused, "seeing as from what I hear tell young Elmer's become only too happy to chase the boys away from DG."

This was true; Emily had nearly overloaded her emotional circuits with joy at this convenient development. Hank could crush a human's spine with his bare hands if he needed to, but for some reason the mother unit didn't perceive him as capable of circumventing the approach of partially developed human males.

"Made my Missy mad as fire," the farmer continued, "the way he ran off my nephew, wouldn't talk to DG for weeks. Silly of her, really, there ain't no competing in that arena, I just didn't have the heart to tell her as much. 'Cepting that Roxanne disaster he ain't ever had eyes for anyone else."

Little warning alerts started forming in the cyborg's processor but before he could analyse what it was about the conversation that was disrupting his tranquil data stream, an interruption occurred in the form of loud cacophony of yelling in the distance.

"Heh," Spencer snorted in amusement, "sounds like Elmer's crashed the party."

Indeed, it would seem that Officer Gulch was doing his 'pooping'. There many cries and howls of repudiation, Hank's auditory processor filtered out more than one whine of 'Officer Fuuuuuuudd', and numerous other variations on the theme of objecting to the policeman's being there, all summed up by the voice identified as Bobby Gibbons moaning, "DG, _do_ something about him."

The nurture unit and farmer unit turned towards the commotion, using – or pretending to use – the night vision binoculars to hone in on the source of disturbance. Hank had just ascertained the position of the cop when the princess came storming out trees to confront her guard.

"Oh no you don't," she hissed at a pitch even Hank's enhanced auditory capabilities had difficulty picking up at this distance, "Don't you _dare_! You are _such_ a bastard, if you so much as _think_ of going all Honest Cop on us now, of all times, I'm gonna superglue a pink flamingo to your cruiser's hood, I'm gonna hound Roxie every damn day for the rest of her life and leave her little notes saying Officer Gulch made me do it, I'm gonna...I'm gonna...I'm gonna tell Popsicle that you need help working on your truck and you were just too shy to ask him!" she howled menacingly.

Hank tweaked his sound amplifiers with interest; he wondered if that was true, he'd always wanted a closer look at the policeman's truck...

"She's been good for him," Farmer Spencer commented suddenly, disrupting the cyborg's thought sequence, causing him to look away from where DG was still venting her teenage fury at the blandly smiling cop. "Sure she hospitalizes him every second year or so and keeps him a regular customer at the ER in between," the man added with wry amusement, "but she's done him a world of good."

The nurture unit stripped several gears in his cognitive machinery trying to follow the human train of logic: the old farmer was, with near certainty, speaking of the policeman and the princess, but how constant structural damage could be considered a _good_ thing...

Off in the background of the cyborg's auditory awareness, Officer Gulch interrupted DG's tirade with a mild, "Are you done yet? I'm not here to spoil the party; I just wanted to warn you that there was a bear in the area. And watch your language young lady."

"His dad asked me to keep an eye on him," the old farmer remarked pensively, drawing the father unit's attention away from the eighteen year old's indignant reply, "when he found out his health was going down the tubes, old Arnold asked me to watch out for Elmer, give him help if he asked for it. Heh, help Elmer," Spencer grunted with a shake of his head, "I've known him since before he was crawling, that boy doesn't know _how_ to ask for help, he never did. The kid would go halfway around the world and then some just to help a stranger out, but if he had to cross a street to save his life...," the man snorted, "if he had to cross the street to save himself, he wouldn't bloody well _notice_ because he'd be too busy going halfway around the world for a blasted stranger."

Still unable to tabulate the purpose of this conversation, Hank let his gaze drift back to where the princess was trying to help propel the cop out of the camp, her hands planted in the middle of his back as she shoved him along. Officer Gulch grinned and DG squeaked as she suddenly found herself bearing most of the policeman's weight.

"Oh dear," he said in mock concern, "I seemed to have developed a sudden weakness in my legs, whatever shall I do?"

"I worried he'd fall apart when his parents died," Spencer continued after a moment's pause, once again commanding the cyborg's active attention, "I _expected_ him to come apart at the seams, the boy's never handled grief well, he cares too deeply. He damn near tore the town apart when his great-grandfather died and he was only five at the time. I was prepared for him to go right off the deep end and not a damn thing I could do about, promise or no promise," the old friend of the late Mr. Gulch glance unseeingly at the riverside camp and sighed, "and I think we all know why he didn't."

Hank followed his gaze, just in time to see the princess, slowly being crushed under the weight of the cop, grin slyly, release her support and dance to the side. Officer Gulch yelped and stumbled back a half dozen strides trying to regain his balance.

"Hay," DG crowed, "cured you, I'm ma-miraculous!"

The nurture unit frowned – those were almost dangerous words, the princess could not be allowed to realize yet...before he could consolidate the data, the cyborg found his cognitive processes being redirected once more.

"He's a good man," Spencer remarked in that strange off-hand manner human's sometimes used when having a conversation they were simultaneously pretending they weren't having it, "honest, hardworking, cares about people," the old farmer locked ocular systems with the father unit and held his gaze, "You could entrust him with the most important person in your life and know he'll care for her, protect her, like she is the most precious thing in the world."

Hank blinked in true surprise – he knew that, that very trait was one of the reasons why the tic toks had enlisted Officer Gulch in the first place, but how did Farmer Spencer know...

The cyborg's attention was diverted again by a sudden rustle in the bushes near the princess. It was becoming impossible, between the Othersider's strange conversation and his attempts to monitor the princess, for the nurture unit to finish streaming a single chain of thought.

DG squeaked in alarm and latched onto the policeman's hand in a manner that disturbed the watching tic tok in its familiarity. "Is that a bear?" she demanded.

The cop merely grunted noncommittally and reached down to scoop up a stick that had been lying near his feet. As a weapon it was woefully insufficient in the cyborg's estimation: while nearly as long as the human's arm, the circumference was such that it was hardly thicker than DG's index finger, resulting in a strangely pitched whipping sound as the policeman waved it once or twice experimentally. Hank wondered why he didn't just use his side arm...

...right up until the moment Officer Gulch darted forward as far as the princess' hold on him would allow and brought the stick down on some unseen object with the full force of his arm and an exquisitely timed flick of the wrist. There was a loud _Crack_ and an even louder yelp of pain, and a young male tumbled out of the brush, clutching his buttock and gasping imprecations.

"Evening JR," the cop said conversationally, "nice night to play boogeyman at your little sister's grad party."

"Bloody hell Elmer, what'd you have to do that for?"

"That'd still be Officer Gulch to you," the man began, only to be cut off as a slightly intoxicated Missy Spencer caught sight of her brother and let out a shriek of rage.

"Siblings," Farmer Spencer sighed, watching the indignant teen descend upon her older brother, "no matter how old they get, you get them together and it negates all maturity."

Down by the river, JR Spencer raised his hands in surrender, "Hey Missy, chill, you should be thanking me. I brought beer..."

"I didn't hear that," the policeman muttered, looking anywhere but where the young man had pointed.

"..._and_ friends. Think of it Missy, college boys."

"I'm going to kill him," muttered his father, apparently extrapolating on the visual data he was receiving.

"Of course, they shall be treating you like the perfect gentlemen they aren't," JR continued with a caustic glance into the brush behind him.

"Friends' little sisters are off limits unless you intend to marry 'em," agreed a voice from the shadows, it was followed shortly by another young male, carrying a case of beer that the policeman was assiduously not looking at. "And who might _you_ be?" he added with interest upon spotting DG.

"Your funeral," the cop murmured mildly, drawing Missy's attention. The princess hastily dropped the hand she'd been holding but apparently not in time. The eighteen year old let out a sound not unlike the barn cat when Hank had stepped on its tail, spun around on her heel and stomped away. Officer Gulch observed her progress with a look of puzzled concern while DG huffed in frustration and began to follow.

Spencer sighed, "And Maggie had only just got them talking again."

"Hey," JR's friend inquired snidely, "I didn't realize this was a luau, who brought the pig?"

DG abruptly altered course and booted him in the shins, _hard_. The boy went down cursing.

"I told you it was your funeral," Officer Gulch commented placidly, "but no one seems to listen to friendly warnings anymore. And that, I think, is my cue to leave, if the bear shows up just scream, I'll be around."

"Ah, you're not going to come running in _every _time you hear a scream are you?" the princess asked in a tone calculated to convey disinterested curiosity. Hank was quite familiar with that tone, so, it would seem, was the cop.

Officer Gulch halted midstride and, with a pained grimace, demanded, "What did you do?"

The eighteen year old smiled innocently, "Oh, you know, this and that, I'd already had pranks to play and old scores to settle, but now I have a friend to cheer up and wrongs to right, too," she added with a scowl at the downed boy.

The policeman dropped his head into his hands, "_DG._"

"Ever watch 'The Parent Trap'?"

The cop groaned, "Well that explains why your hands are sticky, your parents have _got_ to stop letting you watch TV."

Hank took a memo.

"Oh like that would help," DG noted scornfully, "besides," she sniffed, "those characters were amateurs."

"Monkey see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil; monkey go over there now and get out of the line of fire," Officer Gulch dictated, "Monkey shall endeavour to ignore the screams of frustration, exasperation, surprise or utter bafflement. Kindly use screams of utter terror if it is a bear, or you could to all try to be absolutely silent and truly freak me out."

"Yes, yes," the teenager agreed impatiently, "monkey go shoo now."

The policeman rolled his eyes and started back along the path provided by the deer trail. Hank turned away from the scene below only to find that the old farmer was staring at him intently.

"I know there's a bit of an age gap between 'em," Spencer began hesitantly, presumably continuing the one-sided conversation he'd been having with the tic tok, "but Hank, have you ever considered...I mean...that is...personally I'd get down on bended knees in thanks if I'd've thought Elmer were interested in my daughter. Any father 'round these parts would. Age ain't everything. Do you think...? I mean, you wouldn't get in the way if...," he trailed off hopefully.

The cyborg looked at the farmer, still unable arrange the data of the conversation into a recognizable context. If Spencer considered the policeman good mating material for Missy, why didn't he suggest it to them? The young female seemed sufficiently matured.

The Othersider continued to study the uncomprehending nurture unit's features for a moment, then he sighed, "Never mind, she's young yet and...well, it's none of my business, I just...," he coughed uncomfortably, "I suppose they'll always be our little girls, for all they are about to go take on the world for themselves now."

The father unit blinked and turned to look back at his borrowed offspring. His little girl, off to take on the world, he'd never really computed the scenario in that manner before. For some reason the idea bothered him.

"Alright gentlemen," Officer Gulch said, climbing onto the platform and startling the two fathers, "we've got two bogeys in the woods tonight: one is the possible bear, the other is an imp hell bent on mischief. Our mission, as we have no choice but to accept it, is to monitor the situation and intervene should either attempt physical harm upon the partygoers."

"DG won't try to hurt anyone," Hank asserted positively.

"Won't try, but will probably succeed," muttered Spencer, "if this were 'Friday the 13th', she'd be playing Jason."

"Exaggeration," the cop replied, reclaiming his binoculars, "she has yet to kill anyone."

"Only because her usual victim shows remarkable resilience and stamina."

"Just keep an eye out..."

A strangled yell of surprise and shock ripped through the general sounds of merriment.

"...for the path of the tornado," Officer Gulch sighed.

"That sounded like Bobby Gibbons," the cyborg noted after a quick consult of his voice recognition system.

"I do believe that is his collapsed tent over there," remarked Spencer.

"Yup," the policeman agreed as the teenage boy struggled free of the wreckage, fighting through a web work of strings and cloying debris as he went.

A sudden flash of white caught the watchers' eyes as one of the tents suddenly whipped up into the bows of the surrounding trees. There was a shriek of embarrassment followed immediately by a roar of frustrated anger and two scantily clad teenagers dashed for cover amidst the howling amusement of their fellows.

"You know," Officer Gulch mused, "Kenney may yet forgive DG for that day he tried to babysit her – I do believe that was his granddaughter."

Hank tracked the sound of a sudden crash in time to see a boy disappear into the branches of one of the older trees. "Rigged with proper speed of ascent to get his head clear of the ground before he finishes flipping around," he commented as the boy reappeared a few feet higher, suspended by his ankles.

"Neck's gonna be sore in the morning, though," Spencer observed, "You know, I change my mind," he continued as a pained cry was added to the general din, "she's _worse_ than Jason, what that poor boy ever do to her?"

"Far as I know, he was rude to me," the cop sighed as they watched JR's friend running screaming across the campsite.

"Where'd she get the wasp nest?" the father unit wondered anxiously, "Without hurting herself?"

"Probably the same place she got the honey, the rope and the..."

A long series of crackling bangs shattered the night, scattering another batch of teens.

"...fire crackers," the policeman finished dryly, absently wiping his hands on his pants, "I think it just might be time to interfere," he decided, turning towards the ladder.

"You _think_," Spencer snorted as, with a loud splash, his son's friend sought refuge in the river, "hate to break it to you Elmer, but you don't seem to have much more luck restraining her activities than anyone else. Hell, the noise has probably scared all wildlife away in a hundred mile radius. Bogey number one is probably gone, long gone, eh Elmer?...Elmer?"

The farmers turned around to find the policeman standing stock still at the edge of the platform, making no attempt to climb down despite the continuing chaos announcing itself from the campsite below.

"I don't want to alarm anyone," Officer Gulch said slowly, "but there appears to be a bear climbing the ladder. A big one."


	15. Cruel

_Disclaimer: I don't own Tin Man, do you? If so, can I have it?_

_Author's Note: Currently spending my days in a state of perpetual perceived stupidity, and yet they just keep increasing my workload as if I'm doing something right. Sigh. Also, currently without internet (again) so expect posting delays on my posting delays, now I'm off to find a coffee shop or some such place with conveniently free access so that I can post this here chapter. Hope you enjoy._

_PS Having found that coffee shop, you darn well better enjoy this chapter – the price of internet was one expensive cup of substandard lukewarm hot chocolate._

_PPS Almost forgot, Queen Isabella, if you are still reading this and have not despaired totally of my tic toks, this may be the chapter you were waiting for.__If so, this chapter's for you._

* * *

...

* * *

Hank stood on the old farmhouse porch doing something entirely human, or at the very least organic life-form based: he was feeling the breeze, letting it brush against his tactile sensors, sorting through its olfactory stimuli, not for any particular purpose, just to catalogue and appreciate each individual scent. The cyborg attuned himself to the night air, listened as its passing made a distinctive rustling of leaves around creaking tree branches, and was cognisant of one thing: he was going to miss this.

Not that there weren't breezes or trees in the O.Z., or even nights, despite the twin suns, but it was not equivalent. The Otherside held different sites and sounds than the Realm of his creation; unique animals and diverse plant life, each with their own distinct scent, and a solitary moon to alter the visual impression of the landscape as it gravitated around the planet. It was...nice.

Emotions were such confounding input, so slow in their development, so utterly baffling in their arrival, so incomprehensible in their function. And how very anomalous that they should so concretely surface at just the appropriate interval that his newfound realization of his surroundings should be intermingled with that emotion called regret: DG was dreaming.

She wasn't having _the_ dreams, not yet, but the Light was beginning to reboot, bringing with it fragments of the O.Z., those discrete images of her deleted chronological history that could be allowed. Her bedroom walls were beginning to be covered with depictions not of this Realm, and the emerging restlessness that her guard had begun to comment on was creating certain incompatibilities between the princess and her mother unit. The storm was coming, not yet, but he calculated a few months, a year – annual – at most and their existence as humans would cease...

...not that the cyborgs could summate actual enjoyment of simulating humans; it was perplexing and problematical, and no matter how much data he and Emily collected, analyzed, integrated, cross-referenced and exchanged, they never seemed to get the operating parameters entirely correct. And yet there were functions of this reality that Hank found he...very much enjoyed. Interacting with the neighbours for one, executing tasks as a true member of the rural community for another, not to mention harvesting a crop, fixing a tractor for the five thousand four hundred and thirty eighth time, detecting the specific tones of the Otherside communication device...

"Hank," Emily called from the house, "it's _your_ turn."

...picking DG and/or Officer Gulch up from the hospital. Not that the father unit should find any activity that indicated either the princess or her guard had sustained injury pleasant, but they always had the best stories, almost as good as that time in Milltown...

There was a detectable sign of moisture in the air when the cyborg navigated his truck into the hospital parking lot, a prelude to the general kind of Otherside storm. Hank paused a moment to analyze the atmospheric data his sensors could measure, trying to determine whether this would be the classification of storm that assisted or inhibited the farmers' nascent crops. He was in no hurry, the human DG liked to call Friendly Fred had indicated that the princess was in no immediate danger, though Emily had perceived unusual variances in his speech patterns at the time of the call.

Whatever anomalies might have been found in the local ambulance driver's communication, however, Hank certainly discovered a significant lack of verbal interaction upon entering the hospital. Not that the rural ER was ever particularly noisy, but never was the quiet so complete that the cyborg could discern the nearest conversation taking place a full three stories above, and at an extremely low decibel at that. The nurses were going about their business in a deliberate hush, picking up and placing everything with a quiet care, as if the slightest noise were contraindicated. A woman well known for her detailed vocal representations of the illnesses no one believed she actually had was sitting in her chair, apparently not in the least tempted to say a word to those nearby, while across the room a young man tiptoed towards the water fountain and ever so slowly eased on the tap.

The entire room flinched and flicked nervous glances down the hall as if the miniscule noise of water hitting the basin might herald the arrival of a predator. Hank did a quick probability calculation and headed that way.

DG was in her usual room, the lights were dimmed, the princess wrapped carefully within the bedding, for all appearances intact yet obviously insensate. If it weren't for the sure data that the nineteen year old never lay so still, even in sleep, the cyborg might have mistaken her condition for one of regular repose. As he paused just inside the doorway, father unit became aware of a feeling of...anxiety, over the princess' present state and how she'd come to be there. This was not consistent with the usual behavioural trajectory. Even as the thought passed through his CPU, another circuit contemplated what room Officer Gulch might be in – it was rare for the princess to go to the hospital and not take her guard with her.

"Ah Hank," the doctor whispered, creeping into the room with the kind of measured care humans liked to reserve for volatile explosives, "I was hoping you'd arrive quickly. There is no cause for concern at present," he added hastily, correctly interpreting the nurture unit's look, "we're just keeping her for observation in case there is an adverse reaction between the alcohol she consumed and the other drugs in her system. Were you aware that she would be drinking tonight?"

The cyborg shook his head. They had calculated it to be a distinct probability, but between the Consort's parenting guide and their cumulative experience, the tic toks had been forced to conclude that there was not much they could do within the normal limits of expected behaviour to prevent the nineteen year old from venturing out to interact with her friends. The father unit shifted uneasily, acutely aware that he was accustomed to having a cheerful or gruff – depending on the speaker – explanation of the day's events by this point in his hospital visit. The alteration in routine was...unsettling.

"Well it seems," the doctor continued at a volume that would have strained the auditory capabilities of a human, "that one of her peers thought it would be entertaining to slip the contents of his parents' medicine cabinet into her drink. Shelly Gibbons has been in contact regarding what Bobby-"

A sudden creaking sound drew the nurture unit's attention...

"-may have used," the doctor's dictation sped up a fraction...

...and Hank discovered that he had been so focused on DG that he had failed to perceive Officer Gulch standing, silent and still, in the far corner of the darkened room, his arms crossed over his chest and head bowed in unwavering contemplation of the unconscious teen. The metal stand behind him creaked again under the white-knuckled grip of his hands, as if the policeman was struggling to hold himself in place.

"We'll know more shortly," the doctor persisted in a clinical tone, marred only by a slight fluctuation in pitch, "but we expect her to be ready to go home in the morning. Might want to avoid driving or operating machinery for a week or so, in case of lingering side effects, other than that, there isn't much for us to do but let the drugs work their way out of her system. You can feel free to stay with her if you'd like, I'll be on call all night, and I'm sure you know by now where the nurses are," he added with a minute quirk of his lips, "let them know if she needs anything, now if you'll excuse me, I have to make rounds," and with that the man slipped out of the room as quietly, though perhaps a touch more swiftly, as he had arrived, leaving the tic tok alone with the princess and her guard.

Hank ambulated cautiously towards the hospital bed, his senses focused on DG's slow, steady breathing, while tracking the cop's movements, or lack thereof, out of the corner of his visual field. Officer Gulch remained utterly still until the tic tok was within a foot of the bed, whereupon his head snapped up, his gaze focusing on the nurture unit so abruptly that the cyborg automatically met his eyes...

...and, for all that tic toks did not have innate survival impulses, took an instinctive step back.

One time in Milltown, a very young Papay pup had wandered from the outskirts of their fields and almost under the wheels of a tractor. The only the reason the offspring had not come to harm was because its frantic progenitor had arrived in time to reduce the machine to a twisted compilation of scrap metal and component parts. Watching the cop as he shifted his gaze back to the princess, his breathing regulated to hers, his hands gripping tighter still to the metal bars at his back, as if doing so would help him contain himself, the father unit calculated that the adult Papay might have looked thus, had it endured fifteen years of desperation before its pup were threatened.

Emotions were such confounding input, so slow in their development, so utterly baffling in their arrival, so incomprehensible in their function, that it is only now as they concretely surface at the end, and far too late, that Hank realizes the tic toks might have done something incredibly...cruel.


	16. Shameless

_Disclaimer: There are many things in this world that I do not own, but that has not stopped me playing with them, sadly Tin Man is one of these things, as is the song I am about to mangle in my A.N._

_Authors Note: At laaaaaaaast the end has come along, my muse torturing days are over, and I can't remember more lyrics, so I'll just end this so-ong. Sorry, but my word, it feels like I have been writing this story forever, what with the non conducive semester, the writer's block, the fatigue, and the schedule that just. Would't. Cooperate. Not to mention the current lack of internet, today's price is one ridiculously expensive bottle of orange juice. I mean, it tastes okay, but worth five dollars it is not! Oh, and in case anyone decides to panic, I just meant the end of 'Tic Tok', not the Gulch Verse (of course, you probably assumed that already). Man this chair is uncomfortable. Sigh. One week until internet restoration, one week until internet restoration, this shall be my new mantra. Enjoy (or not, whichever you prefer)._

* * *

...

Emily glanced at the two princesses sitting at the table in her dilapidated yet tidy kitchen with a touch of human-like matronly pride. The house, like the rest of the town, may show obvious signs of disrepair after a considerable interval of neglect, but it was the best kept dwelling in Milltown, thanks, in part, to the diligent efforts of Hank. The father unit contained considerable skills as a carpenter; if only he weren't convinced he was made to be a mechanic. Neither DG nor her sister, for whom the cyborgs had retained a certain measure of affection since their temporary edit during the events of the eclipse, were the type to disrupt their mental processes over the superficial trappings of the edifice, however. It's not like the nurture units really needed the dwelling, after all it was merely something visually comforting in its familiarity, both to the tic toks and the humans they occasionally had need to emulate. And it was perfectly within the maintenance of DG's personal regulation that she should stop by when in the vicinity in order to see how they proceeded – the princess never forgot those she cared about, except when magically forced to do so.

What the mother unit's probability generator had completely unprepared her for, however, was that they should arrive in an entirely recognizable Otherside vehicle, driven by none other than Officer Gulch. Emily wondered why she even activated her logic processor anymore, at least where Othersiders or princesses were involved, it _never_ got its calculations right. Experience analysis should have informed her that the policeman would show up sooner or later, he'd always been the one best suited for locating DG, at least until the advent of Cain. The Tin Man was currently prowling about the town somewhere, performing his habitual security sweep for any threat, whether biological or mechanical, as if the cyborgs would allow any harm to come to their liberator. It had always comforted Emily to know that, in the absence of the Otherside cop, DG had managed to find a guardian whose human instinct was so ready to assume trouble, statistics showed, after all, that he was usually right.

Officer Gulch's own intuition, meanwhile, had proven as completely unequal to the function of predicting the mother unit's presence as her CPU had been at predicting his – or maybe the difficulty was initiated by the fact that she'd been in the process of performing a minor grasping device repair at the time of his arrival. The Othersider had taken one look at the exposed metal endoskeleton of the nurture unit's hand and had halted as abruptly as an instantaneous systems crash. His wild glance in the direction of the youngest princess had been answered only with a shrug and a comment of 'cyborg', and the policeman hadn't moved since. Occasionally he'd start to twitch or move his mouth a fraction, as if contemplating speech, before conflicting data would swamp his processing once more and leave him completely unable to function. It was a shame, Emily thought, that humans couldn't simply be rebooted.

The princesses giggled and whispered to one another as they sat waiting, casting furtive glances at the immobile male with whom Hank was having a one-sided conversation. The father unit had been greatly concerned about the wellbeing of Officer Gulch after their precipitous return to the O.Z., the tic tok recalled as she ambulated about preparing the tea. While there had been no reason to believe he'd have taken any structural damage from the trajectory of the travel storm – and, indeed, his general risk of injury should have been reduced significantly by the removal of the princess from his vicinity – Hank had been convinced that the policeman would take some kind of intangible harm from their absence. It was well that DG had able to report, her last time through after a quick visit to the Otherside, that the cop seemed to be doing well. The father unit would likely have been more reassured by that if he were currently able to elicit a response from the apparently catatonic human.

The youngest princess finished carefully folding a stray scrap of paper and, with a practiced flick of her fingers, bounced it off her former guard's forehead. Officer Gulch didn't stir, Hank frowned, DG giggled, Azkadellia scolded...

...and Father Vue floated through the door. "Hank," the old tic tok uttered nebulously, "the generator is malfunctioning again, I understand you have experience with the operation and repair of these devices..." he trailed off suggestively, holding out a wrench in one of his various grasping units.

"Be happy to take a look," the cyborg with delusions of mechanical ability said eagerly, reaching out for the tool, only to have another, completely human hand beat him to it.

Officer Gulch blinked and contemplated the wrench he'd instinctively snatched out of the father unit's grasp. "Are these generators running anything important?" the cop asked slowly, turning the implement over in his hands.

"Vital," Father Vue informed him, "Besides powering the charging units, they provide the necessary energy for the reconstruction of the assembly bays."

"Oh," the policeman commented a touch blankly, taking a step towards the door, "I guess I'd best have a look at them then, Hank can be my gofer if he doesn't mind."

"I don't have the correct programming to simulate quadruped mammals," the father unit pointed out apologetically, "besides I am far too large."

The Othersider faltered and cast the cyborg a pained glance, "Just...just lend me a hand would you?" the cop directed faintly, as if struggling not to relapse into his previous stupor, "See if you could find me an instruction manual, and some rags...and maybe a creeper..."

It was a good thing, Emily thought as the males exited the house, the human still listing the various things he might need, that Officer Gulch would have Hank on hand to locate these items, else he might not have time to look at the generator himself. And how convenient that it would keep the tic tok from making the attempt as well.

From her place at the table, DG laughed merrily. "Some things never change," she chortled happily, "he'll have fixed half the machines in Milltown by the time we leave, see if he doesn't. Oh no you don't," she added, catching her sister's arm as the eldest princess made to stand, "his concept of reality just took a severe blow, least we can do is give him time to play with some machinery and get his balance back." As Azkadellia settled reluctantly back into her seat, the youngest princess chuckled once more and, with a shake of her head, murmured "Doesn't matter what life throws at him, Gulch _will_ be Gulch."

The cyborg frowned as she processed the last statement. Scanning her memory banks briefly, Emily was forced to conclude that the princess was correct. No matter the situation, the policeman's behavioural patterns had always tended towards helping those near him. Even now that he'd been relieved of the responsibility of DG's safety, he'd been pressed back into service as the eldest princess' bodyguard. Though she no longer functioned at the youngest princess' parental authority, the mother unit felt she really ought to speak to DG about this. People, the tic tok found, had shocking habit of taking advantage of Officer Gulch's good nature and using him shamelessly.

Couldn't have that.


End file.
